This shot of an Icelandic church looked nice enough in color but I thought it had a bit more potential as a black and white image – though there were a few issues I wanted to sort out first. For this project I used Exposure X. The same tools exist in other programs, but I find the presets, tools and adjustments in Exposure X are in some mysterious way very much attuned to my … [Read more...] about An Icelandic church edited in Exposure X
Perspective correction
If you do a lot of travel or architectural photography you'll know all about the problems of perspective. The most common issue is converging verticals, or keystone distortion, where you had to tilt the camera upwards to get the whole of the subject in the frame, and this has made the sides of the subject lean inwards.
But smaller problems can be just as annoying, such as a slight horizontal skew that leaves things you know should be horizontal on a slant. Or a perfectly rectangular facade that's actually not quite rectangular because you couldn't shoot it from dead opposite.
All of these things can be fixed with digital perspective correction tools. Lightroom and Capture One Pro offer built in perspective correction tools – and other programs like Luminar, Exposure X and ON1 Photo RAW can do the same.
Note that you should only carry out perspective correction after you've applied lens corrections to fix any lens distortion. Any trace of barrel or pincushion distortion makes it impossible to judge if a line or object is properly horizontal or vertical.
Perspective correction might seem like a relatively technical and unimportant job, but it can make a big difference to pictures of landmarks and buildings.
DxO ViewPoint 3 review
DxO ViewPoint 3 is the latest version of DxO's perspective and distortion correction program. It works as a standalone application, as a plug-in for Lightroom, Photoshop and Elements and as a fully-integrated panel within DxO Optics Pro, DxO's flagship optical correction and raw processing tool. DxO Optics Pro 11 review ViewPoint is designed to correct the … [Read more...] about DxO ViewPoint 3 review
How to fix glare with perspective correction
Here's an interesting little problem you often get when photographing paintings or other pictures. You get the camera perfectly perpendicular to the picture, only to find you've got horrible glare from the surface of the picture, completely ruining the shot. So here's the problem. I didn't have a polarising filter with me, which might have solved the problem, and this shot … [Read more...] about How to fix glare with perspective correction
Capture One keystone correction tips
Keystone correction is usually used to fix converging verticals in architectural shots – that's the most obvious use for the Capture One keystone correction tools – but this vertical keystone correction isn't the only kind you'll need. Keystone distortion happens when you tilt the camera relative to your subject, and this can mean horizontal tilt as well as vertical tilt. … [Read more...] about Capture One keystone correction tips
How to use the DxO Force Parallel tool
DxO Optics Pro's speciality is optical corrections. It does this using a combination of automatic lens corrections and manual perspective adjustment options, including the DxO Force Parallel tool. DxO Optics Pro can identify the lens and camera used to take a picture from the shooting (EXIF) information embedded in the image by the camera, and it then uses custom made … [Read more...] about How to use the DxO Force Parallel tool
Straighten up your shots with the DxO Force Rectangle tool
DxO Optics Pro uses custom-made lens correction profiles to fix the distortion issues inherent in nearly all lenses, but it goes further than that – it can also correct the perspective distortion created when you photograph a rectangular object at a slight angle, thanks to the DxO Force Rectangle tool . You often don't notice this kind of misalignment at the time, only later on … [Read more...] about Straighten up your shots with the DxO Force Rectangle tool
Fixing perspective is easy with Capture One Pro’s Keystone Vertical tool
You can fix converging verticals and other perspective problems in many programs, including Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro, but Capture One Pro 7 has what I think is the most easiest and most accurate tool of all. The problem with fixing keystoning is that you need to be extremely accurate in aligning the tool's marker points with vertical lines in your image, and this is … [Read more...] about Fixing perspective is easy with Capture One Pro’s Keystone Vertical tool
Lightroom 5’s new Upright tool
Lightroom looks and feels a lot like Lightroom 4, but there are some key new features. One of these is the new Upright tool, which can automatically correct perspective problems in shots of buildings and other rectangular objects. The first thing is that this tool is easy to miss! It's been integrated into the Lens Correction panel in the Develop module, rather than getting … [Read more...] about Lightroom 5’s new Upright tool