Perspective distortion using wide angle lenses

Cuchulain · 10 Sep 2017 at 17:18

Recently I've been taking a lot of city shots using a wide angle lens (Sigma 10-25 3.5) and as it's very difficult to get yourself in a position to zoom out most photos have perspective and distortion issues. I've tried and failed many times using the Adaptive Wide Angle filter in PS with no success but DXO viewpoint has managed an acceptable job, before I fork out for Viewpoint is there any other software I should be considering?

Many thanks

Cuchulain · 12 Sep 2017 at 09:31

Marzipanogram said:
I'm not sure if these are any good for making curves lines straight or if they are just "straightening" applications.
http://www.colorpilot.com/perspective.html
http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/
http://www.shiftn.de/

I've used Perspective Pilot (top link) in the past for straightening and it's very good.
It allows you to "draw" multiple lines across the image (not just 2 vertical and 2 horizontals). It doesn't (or didn't) allow you to use 16bit files, only 8bit.

I agree Adaptive Wide Angle is POS, especially if you're using Scaling on your Windows monitor.
Plus it's very slow and clunky.

Perspective Pilot was exactly what I was after! Thank you.

Cuchulain · 12 Sep 2017 at 15:02

Don't you have to recompose and bend the lens around to get a properly focused wide angle shot though?

Cuchulain · 17 Sep 2017 at 16:33

Scam said:
Can anyone show some bad cases of this? Can't say I've ever felt the need to correct perspective. It comes with the nature of using a WA lens surely?

Perspective pilot, 2 clicks made this a lot better (not perfect by a long way, especially given the amount of rubbbish cloning required after the crop)

Cuchulain · 19 Sep 2017 at 10:18

I'm embarrassed to admit I'd never considered using warp, it's done a brilliant job!