Lens Distortion - It's Distorting My MIND!!!!!

[graciousness]

I've been trying to learn how to fix lens distortion in Photoshop CS3 (apparently, Aperture grrrr doesn't have a fix for that) and it's really, really tricky. I use Filter>Lens Correction and try to fix images there but it's so bloody hard!!!! I've looked at some websites and so far, nothing. I don't know if I'm just an idiot and shouldn't bother or this issue is not as easy to fix as some websites I've read have said.

Can someone help me please and maybe give a website that has a bit more in-depth details on fixing this matter or whatever advice you can give???? It's really driving me mental and if I don't get my head around it, I'm going to give up urban landscape photography. I don't wanna do that, but I don't want to get a stroke everytime I have to try to fix lens distortions.........

Cheers and thanks

Grace, on THE OTHER SITE, there is a video section that has some pretty good tutorials. It seems that I have seen a couple on lens distortion. You may want to do a search there.. they may not be CS3 specific, but still might give you some ideas to go with.

[IABoomer]

Are you using LR2, because LR3 has a Lens Corrections. That, plus some pretty good noise reduction might make it worth an upgrade.

Something else I stumbled upon but haven't used is PTLens, which looks like a plugin for versions of Photoshop before CS5. It appears to be pretty capable based on samples they provided.

PTLens

[zona5101]

Let me google that for you

[Woody]

Originally Posted by zona5101

Let me google that for you

Don't you just hate that? There's always one in the crowd.

Cheers,

John W




PS not you Gracie.

[graciousness]

Originally Posted by zona5101

Let me google that for you

Thanks for the sarcasm, but I did google and hence, followed steps in what I've found, but haven't found one that is a bit more in-depth that would help with heavier distortions.

But I guess you didn't finish or bother reading my post and said "I READ WEBSITES..." and I posted a thread so to seek insights from knowledgeable members of this forum.

Why would you actually go out of your way to provide a reply if you're not meaning to help at all but to be condescending? Nothing else to do?

[graciousness]

Back to scheduled programming.....

Originally Posted by Papa Rotzzi

Grace, on THE OTHER SITE, there is a video section that has some pretty good tutorials. It seems that I have seen a couple on lens distortion. You may want to do a search there.. they may not be CS3 specific, but still might give you some ideas to go with.

Yes, have been searching there ......found one but it's for CS5....doing more search there

Originally Posted by IABoomer

Are you using LR2, because LR3 has a Lens Corrections. That, plus some pretty good noise reduction might make it worth an upgrade.

Something else I stumbled upon but haven't used is PTLens, which looks like a plugin for versions of Photoshop before CS5. It appears to be pretty capable based on samples they provided.

PTLens

No Lightroom for me, I do use Aperture and Photoshop CS3 on my iMac. I can't afford to upgrade my CS3 as we know it's darn expensive and I spent tons on the CS3 Creative Suite as it is.....ayayay....

I'm going to look into that PTLens!! Many thanks for that!!

Originally Posted by Woody

Don't you just hate that? There's always one in the crowd.

Crazy, isn't it? Don't know what warranted that kind of response - my charming personality must have expired

[Woody]

Originally Posted by graciousness

my charming personality must have expired

Awwwww!

I'm sure it hasn't

John W

[graciousness]

Researching PTLens, found this Flickr discussion interesting for those who are also looking at lens distortion correction:

Flickr: Discussing Mac users: Lensfix or PTlens? in Photography for Real Estate

[dlambert]

At one point, I tried a trial version of DxO Optics Pro, and one of the things I really liked about it was the optics correction. It's got a big list of supported lenses, and if your lens is on the list, you just pick it and let it do its thing (if memory serves, it may even try to pull the lens used from EXIF and use it automatically). Really slick.

I'm almost certain it's not doing anything you couldn't also do in PS, but the preset concept is *really* nice. Newer versions of PS have lens profiles, too, I believe, but I'm not sure if they've caught up to DxO in terms of ease-of-use.