Fisheye and Software (DxO?)

winstonator · 10 Jan 2011 at 15:04

Hi all

Ive got my new 10.5 Nikon fisheye lens - very happy so far with it and love the fact that it isnt one of those fisheyes with the traditional circular image from the centre. I mainly purchased so i could also use it for landscapes and for use as a ultra wide angle.

Im about to purchase the DxO softward which is said to be the best for stretchign the images back from fisheye to ultra wide angle (and correcting lines etc).

Just wondering if this "stretching out" function is also in photoshop Cs or the lke - because if it is then i wont purchase it and instead purchase the Photoshop software.

Does anyone know whether photoshop does this, and can they give me a dummies guide to get me started?

I only have the cheap and nasty photoshop elements 5 at present but will be purchasing the proper stuff once i work out which suits me (and when i stop spending money on lenses!).

Cheers!

Mud · 10 Jan 2011 at 17:15

Photoshop CS5 has a lens correction database which includes geometric distortion of fisheyes, and if my 16/2.8D is on there I bet the 10.5/2.8 is too. I don't really like fisheye perspective being referred to as 'distortion', but that's how adobe seem to regard it. There's also the fisheye-hemi plugin for photoshop (I've used it as far back as CS3, so any semi-recent version should do) that corrects the verticals only. Think I paid about £20 for that.

DxO works, I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but I didn't find a lens-specific database in it. I pulled a slider and it 'de-fished' my fisheye to various degrees. It's capable, no question.

e: I used to have a 10.5/2.8 so I dug out an old .NEF. CS5 does indeed do rectilinear conversion for this lens. You lose a lot more of the edges of the frame though, and the edges are less detailed than just correcting verticals. Different effect, so perhaps not a fair comparison.

winstonator · 11 Jan 2011 at 08:51

Thanks for your help. In your opinion, is CS3/5 something that i could learn with a Dummies Guide (im quite savy with technology) or does it require a short course to really get to grips with it?

The_blue · 11 Jan 2011 at 16:02

I learnt via google.

Think of what you want to do, google 'how to xxxx in photoshop' follow one of the thousands of tutorials.

Mud · 11 Jan 2011 at 16:19

winstonator said:
Thanks for your help. In your opinion, is CS3/5 something that i could learn with a Dummies Guide (im quite savy with technology) or does it require a short course to really get to grips with it?

When it comes down to it, Photoshop is pretty simple...it's learning how to achieve the processing you want that's complicated. Plug-ins can do most of the heavy-lifting (most people are trying to end up in similar places), but as The_blue said there're tutorials to achieve pretty much everything with 'unplugged' Photoshop.