Tutorial Correcting Verticals

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Craig
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Craig_85 submitted a new resource:

Correcting Verticals - Using Lightroom to correct keystoning, with an option to recover missing pixels in Photoshop

There seem to be a lot of questions on TP at the moment, especially within the landscape sub forums, about correcting the verticals within a photograph.

The basic issue as we know is one of perspective. When we point a camera upwards, particularly with a wide angle lens attached, the vertical lines converge. Basically they get closer together nearer the top of the image, this is not normally noticed unless buildings are present but can be an issue even with things like trees near the edge...

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Thanks Craig! How much of a benefit do you find tilt-shift vs post processing? Or are the end results the same?
 
Thanks Craig! How much of a benefit do you find tilt-shift vs post processing? Or are the end results the same?

No worries.

I would love a tilt shift lens, partly for the experience in using it, and when I shot canon I was going to buy one, but since moving to Nikon it's out of the question. Their 19mm pc-e is over £3k!

To answer your question just so long as the adjustments are not extreme, you stick to doing all your transform tweaks in one hit before locking them in, and are not printing massive I've never noticed any significant drop in IQ.

A leaning building would stand out more anyway!

Incidentally I was reading about someone the other day who has a 5DSR and Canons excellent 11-24mm and he shoots with the camera level, not pointing up at all, really wide and then just crops in to the top half of the image, still with 20MP to work with. Effectively gaining tilt shift capabilities.
 
Thanks Craig. Very helpful post.
 
Hu Craig,

Thanks for the guide. Very informative. I learn something new every day on here :)
 
I really like the 'auto' uprights option in LR - has anyone found the keyboard shortcut for it ?
 
No worries.

I would love a tilt shift lens, partly for the experience in using it, and when I shot canon I was going to buy one, but since moving to Nikon it's out of the question. Their 19mm pc-e is over £3k!

To answer your question just so long as the adjustments are not extreme, you stick to doing all your transform tweaks in one hit before locking them in, and are not printing massive I've never noticed any significant drop in IQ.

A leaning building would stand out more anyway!

Incidentally I was reading about someone the other day who has a 5DSR and Canons excellent 11-24mm and he shoots with the camera level, not pointing up at all, really wide and then just crops in to the top half of the image, still with 20MP to work with. Effectively gaining tilt shift capabilities.

The other way to do it is to turn the camera length ways - shooting wide and keeping level - crop the bottom off making a square. I do this a lot now ;)

A PCE 24mm is about £1500 - I had one - sold it which I regret but it had such lousy soft corners even centered on the tilt and on the shift plane. I might rebuy a better copy at a later date.
 
Just bought a PC Nikkor 28mm 3.2 as a backup to my Cannon 24nn TS. Can't believe how sharp this is for a 80's lens & only £300! :)





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the trick to using a wide angle lens is not to point it up or down , try and keep it level as level as possible and wider then crop with an image editor, you will get closer than with a non wide angle lens. this will reduce the effect
 
the trick to using a wide angle lens is not to point it up or down , try and keep it level as level as possible and wider then crop with an image editor, you will get closer than with a non wide angle lens. this will reduce the effect

Totally agree, I find the OCD side of myself wanting to do this, but compositionally so much can be gained with a wide angle by pointing it up or down to deliberately exaggerate lines and shapes, but then correction is required...

Thanks for the guide, off to put it into practice now on a problematic image I have, fingers crossed.

Have fun, you should find it easy but if you get really stuck and want to send it my way I don't mind having a go then walking you through it.
 
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