P: Automation in the Perspective Lens Correction

Report · Apr 09, 2011

It is extremely difficult to correct a wide angle shot taken at an angle to straight geometric shapes, such as trees or buildings. Lens Corrections>Manual>Transform probably has all the tools, but in some photos it would take a computer to know which ones to apply and in what order. The Straighten Tool in the Crop panel is brilliant (and has been around in PS for years). Can we have something similar in Lens Corrections, where the user would draw a few straight lines in the image (essentially telling LR what's a building and what's a tree), and LR would attempt to apply the right Transforms to straighten the photo?

Report · Apr 11, 2011

It is really a good idea! Thanks!

Report · Apr 11, 2011

I agree -- it should be possible to draw two lines that should be vertical to set both the rotate and vertical sliders, or to draw two lines that should be horizontal to set both the rotate and horizontal sliders.

Report · May 21, 2011

There is no "Force parallel" feature in Camera Raw as in DxO Optics Pro 6.x.
Raw Converter has instruments to correct lense distorsion, but its not so comfortable as drawing to lines on photo, that must be parallel!

Excuse me for my English

Report · Aug 18, 2011

In the crop tool of lr 3.4.1 there is a spirit level. You can mark two points in a tilted line, ét le voila, the line is perfectly horizintal or vertical again. Very intuitive.

The anti-distortion tool i see in 3.4.1 is horrible. It does it ́s work, but you need too much time to get a rectangle again.

My wishlist-entry for LR4 is a comparable easy anti-distortion tool. You mark the 4 corners of a distorted rectangle (window, building etc.) and the tool makes the windows a perfect rectangle again, according to Scheimpflug rules.

Greetings from Germany
Christian Stüben

Report · Aug 25, 2011

The perspective correction feature is nice, but very difficult to control because you have to juggle at least two sliders in most cases (rotation, horizontal).

It would be nice if there were a better user interface for this. For example, perhaps it might be possible to draw two lines on the image (similar to the 'ruler' tool in crop view when rotating) and have it set the necessary sliders to make those two lines parallel.

Report · Aug 25, 2011

+1. It would be great if the perspective correction in LR would operate like the "keystone correction" feature of a well-known competitive product ;-)

Also, an aspect ratio slider would be nice, so one can stretch or shrink the image in one dimension only to get more natural proportions - the other product has this, too ;-)

P.S. As far as I understand, Lightroom already applies automatic aspect ratio corrections when using the perspective sliders. The corrections depend on the angle of field, i.e. on focal length in relation to sensor dimensions. That seems to work well - however, it would be nice to be able to tweak it a little bit.

Edit: To illustrate what I mean in the P.S. two pictures with exactly the same amount of manual correction (vertical=-93, horizontal=0, scaling=50). The first one at 12mm, the second one 135mm focal length, both on an APS-C camera. Note: This perspective correction is for test purposes only and makes no sense for the photos.

Clearly, LR applies a different aspect ratio depending on the focal length.

Report · Apr 09, 2012

Definitely an excellent idea. I came here just to suggest that feature and found this. It should be really easy to implement - you draw 2 straight vertical lines, Lightroom sets rotation and vertical shift to make those line vertical and parallel. Would save me a huge amount of time.

Report · Apr 09, 2012

I would like to see a better function to correct perspective problems in Lightroom. It have been using DXO Optics Pro for several generations and it always had a better way to do that: Just click 4 points in your photo and "force to rectangle" - voilà! In Lightroom (also still in v4 beta) it is often not possible to get a satisfying result with the geometry tools Vertical/Horizontal correction as there often remains a skewed image.

Report · Apr 09, 2012

In Lightroom, I would love to have the option to correct vertical perspective by clicking on points of vertical lines, adjusting rotation and vertical shift accordingly. Should be simple to implement and would save users a lot of time!

Report · Apr 10, 2012

It looks like something similar was added to Photoshop 6 beta. I saw a demonstration of it for a merged panorama. It looked unnecessarily difficult to use.

Report · May 30, 2012

LIGHTROOM: lens correction similar to drawing an angle in the crop tool: but instead you draw two vertical lines on 2 things that should be vertical in the photo (eg the 2 sides of a house taken with a wide angle lines and camera tilted up, the walls of the house converge). it should be possible to adjust the vertical transform until the lines are parallel, and then rotate the whole image until they are at 90 degrees to the baseline.

Report · Aug 08, 2012

I've used the lens corrections / manual transform option to adjust perspective in LR3 (and briefly in LR4). Although it gets the job done, it seems to me to be an exercise in frustration to get it right... each transform seems to impact another dimension.
For an easy to use corrective tool - try the GIMP (need to tick the "correct" option) you just drag the mesh onto the straight lines in your image (no matter how skewed, and it corrects those lines to vericals and horzontals.
If the vertical or horizontal compression is off (usually only with excessive transforms) then you just run a separate single axis expand or compress. Much quicker to use.

Report · Feb 02, 2013

Yeah, this would be easy, and VERY helpful. LR already has the guts to do 3D perspective transformations, it just needs a UI, similar to the rotation alignment tool, but allowing 2 or 3 lines to be drawn instead of 1.

Report · Jul 04, 2013

I STILL think we need this feature. The upright corrections often fail with interiror shots, which actually makes the process longer on the whole - often I will click on basic, click on auto, click on vertical, then click on off, click on manual and do the lens corrections. OY!

Report · Jul 04, 2013

I concur. A possibility for manual correction by drawing lines (horizontally/vertically only, or complete "keystone correction") would be really nice for the cases when the automation does not work very well (don't get me wrong: the automation is great).

Report · May 13, 2015

It would be nice to be able to just corner pin an image to fix perspective issues.
When the auto tools fail its time consuming to adjust h and v sliders to get the right effect when just pinning two corners would achieve the same result in seconds.