Site Directory Home Page About / Contact Site Search / Links Photoshop Articles & Tutorials Auto Contrast Better Blue Sky Crooked Pictures Photoshop Tips Haze Removal History Brush Hot-Key Action Perspective Correction Rubber Stamp Tool Skin Tone Correction Smart Blur Texas 2-Step Sharpening Action Unsharp Mask + Fade Miscellaneous Articles Action Photography Aperture Diffraction D1X Mystery Pixels D2H Skin Tones D30 & D60 Color Fix LCD Viewfinder Ideas Multiplier Effect Nikon D1 Color Fix Printing & Processing QM Pro for Noise Why Shoot Raw? Digital SLR Camera Reviews Contax N Digital Canon EOS D30 Canon EOS 1D Fuji S1 Pro Fuji S2 Pro Kodak DCS 315 Kodak DCS 620 Kodak DCS 620x Kodak DCS 760 Kodak DCS Pro14n Kodak 645M ProBack Nikon D100 Nikon D1 / D1H / D1X Nikon D2H Nikon D2X Olympus E1 Point & Shoot Camera Reviews Agfa ePhoto 1680 Nikon Coolpix 700 Nikon Coolpix 800 Nikon Coolpix 900 Nikon Coolpix 950 Nikon Coolpix 990 Nikon Coolpix 995 Nikon Coolpix 5700 Other Reviews Flash Accessories Kodak 8500 Printer Olympus P-11 Printer Sigma 50-500 Lens

Best viewed at 1024 x 768 or greater screen resolution, 16 bit color or better. All content & photographs copyrighted, all rights reserved. Perspective Distortion Correction Tutorial Perspective distortion (also called keystone distortion) is a common problem. It is especially apparent in pictures with dominant vertical lines & shapes. The distortion is caused by the camera's digital sensor (the focal plane) not being parallel to an object's surface and/or not level with the center of the object. If you shoot horizontally and level (perpendicular) with the center of an object, its vertical lines will appear straight. If the camera is tilted up, they will bend inward towards the top of the picture. If the camera is tilted down, they will bend inward towards the bottom of the picture. Wide angle lenses accentuate perspective distortion because they display a greater range of relative angles within their larger fields of view. Below: A wide angle scene with a bad case of perspective distortion. Typical scenes with perspective distortion problems: Outdoor photography: Slanted trees, telephone poles, fence posts. Architectural photography: Leaning buildings & structures. Indoor photography: Tilted walls, skewed furniture. Sometimes perspective distortion is unavoidable because of shooting situations or locations, sometimes it's actually desirable for the dramatic visual effect. If you want to correct it, here's an easy way to do it with Adobe Photoshop. The methodology is the same regardless of what version of Photoshop you use. It's fast, it's easy, and it's effective. For this tutorial, please save the above picture to your computer and open it up in Photoshop. After you open the picture in Photoshop, choose Select / All from Photoshop's menu bar. As shown above, the entire picture will be surrounded by Photoshop's 'marching ants' selection line. Then choose Edit / Transform / Skew. Note: I prefer the Skew tool rather than the Perspective tool because it allows me to adjust each control point individually. *The Perspective tool ties two opposite sides of the picture together and should only be used in situations where the perspective distortion is absolutely equal from side to side or from top to bottom (which is rare). Hold the Ctrl key down on your keyboard as you hit the minus (-) key, this will make the picture shrink within the Photoshop desktop & give you room to work around the edges of the picture There are 8 Anchor Points around the edges of the picture. Move the mouse cursor over the top left Anchor point, click & hold your mouse button down on the point, and drag the Anchor point to the left until the buildings on the left side of the picture are straight. Then do the same on the top right Anchor for the right side buildings. If you make a mistake, you can hit the Escape key at any time and start over. If you Escape, you simply have to go back to Edit / Transform / Skew and try again. Look over your results and tweak the corrections if necessary. The picture quality might look a bit rough or blocky at this time, this is normal. When you get it the way you want, hit the Enter key and Photoshop will apply the transformation to the picture. Everything will smooth itself out beautifully. Done. Once you're comfortable with the Skew tool, play around with the other Transform tools ... I think you'll find them to be useful in more ways than you can imagine!