Wide Angle Corrections

Today was all about exploring the extreme end of my new 12-24mm lens, as I know this will be the end that will require the most corrections.

As a Photoshop-CC user I have three main tools to ‘play around’ with when correcting WA lenses. First, simply let the Adaptive Wide Angle filter do all the heavy lifting. Secondly, use the free Transform tool. Thirdly, and the one I like using with WA lenses, is to use the Perspective Warp tool.

As usual with my photography, it’s all about workflow, so here is how I currently use the perspective warp tool.

To give you an idea of what is possible here is the pre-processed 12mm Dual-ISO image, taken on a tripod at F/16. BTW the front of the orchid was about 16in from the sensor plane of my 5DIII.

First, in LR, I put the base corrections in place, which in this case gives me this image.

I then export to PS-CC from LR and create a Perspective Warp frame for the image: in this case it looks like this.

The positioning of the middle, where the two grids join, is dependent on your camera orientation relative to the image. Once the frame is in place I adjust the WA ‘distortion’ as I see fit. In this case I decided to ‘correct’ the lower half like this:

After playing around a little bit more I arrived at the following final boring image!

Bottom line: although one can make an image out of an uncorrected WA shot, with a little bit of LR and Photoshop magic, you can create an image with a reasonable looking feel to it: it’s your artist choice!