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Straighten out those distorted images with this very clever Photoshop Feature.

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Quick reference

Topic: Adaptive Wide Angle

Straighten out those distorted images with this very clever Photoshop Feature.

When to use

Wide-angle lenses are great for getting everything you want into the shot. The problem is that squeezed in perspective where everything bulges. Now sure, you might have been drunk when you took the shot (and that’s the way you remember it), but you don’t want to let everyone else in on your unique perspective on the world; enter Photoshop’s lens correction filter.  Straighten out lines and de-bulge the most egregious of those alcohol induced ‘art shots’.

Instructions

Process

  1. Go to Menu/Filter/Adaptive Wide Angle.
  2. Settings menu.
  3. If Photoshop does not automatically pick up the focal length, enter it manually.
  4. Find a horizon line and click on the left side and drag the line to the right.
  5. Click again and Photoshop will automatically adjust.  
  6. Continue process with the lines in the photo you want to straighten out (doorways, walls, benches, etc).

Clean up

  1. Afterwards, crop out distorted sides on image, or use content aware healing tools to fill in.
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  • 00:04 One of the neat new features for
  • 00:06 photographers inside of Photoshop CS6 is the adaptive wide angle filter.
  • 00:10 As a photographer, there are many times where you're looking to capture as much of
  • 00:14 the scene as you can, but you may be tight on space.
  • 00:16 So, you have to resort to an ultra wide angle or even a fish eye lens.
  • 00:20 If you have any experience shooting with these types of lenses,
  • 00:23 you know that they can produce rounded edges to objects that should be straight.
  • 00:26 While some photographers are looking for this type of effect,
  • 00:29 there are many times where you'd just like to straighten out the photo.
  • 00:32 This is where the adaptive wide angle filter comes into play.
  • 00:35 With your photo opened in Photoshop, head up to the filter menu,
  • 00:38 and then down to adaptive wide angle.
  • 00:40 If the photo was taken straight from your camera,
  • 00:42 Photoshop will most likely recognise the focal length that the image was taken at.
  • 00:46 In this case, the lens was set at 10mm, as you can see on the right.
  • 00:50 If Photoshop doesn't automatically pick up the focal length,
  • 00:53 you can enter it manually.
  • 00:54 At this point, we want to tell Photoshop which areas of the photo should be
  • 00:57 straight, such as the horizon line.
  • 01:00 Clicking once at either end of the horizon will initiate the constraint tool.
  • 01:04 Moving to the other end of the curved line,
  • 01:06 you'll notice that our constraint is being bended based on the focal length.
  • 01:09 Clicking a second time will straighten out the area in question.
  • 01:13 It's usually a good idea to constrain the major curves in your photo.
  • 01:16 In this case, I wanna make sure to add constraint lines to the ledge and
  • 01:20 to the side of the building.
  • 01:22 Once you have straightened out the major areas of your photo,
  • 01:24 press okay to apply the changes.
  • 01:26 Anytime you make adjustments like this,
  • 01:28 you're bound to end up with transparent areas afer the edit.
  • 01:31 What you do from here is up to you.
  • 01:32 You can either use the many healing features inside of Photoshop to
  • 01:35 repair the missing bits or simply crop out the transparency.
  • 01:39 Let's take a look at one more example.
  • 01:40 In this image, the church is definitely suffering from a fish eye affect.
  • 01:43 Let's, again, correct it using adaptive wide angle filter.
  • 01:47 Once the filter has been loaded, we want to draw out our constraints.
  • 01:50 I'm gonna place one on the center ledge,
  • 01:52 one at the base of the church, one at both sides of the front of the building,
  • 01:57 and then I'm gonna finish off by constraining the roof.
  • 02:01 Now that my constraints are in place, pressing okay will apply the filter.
  • 02:05 Looking at the before and
  • 02:06 after, we can certainly see that the fish eye effect is almost nonexistent.
  • 02:09 Again, some photographers are looking for this effect, but
  • 02:12 if you find yourself in the situation where you wanna reverse a distorted image,
  • 02:15 the adaptive wide angle filter might be your best bet.

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