One of the biggest mistakes amateur photographers make while snapping photographs is that they ignore the perspective. The problem of perspective distortion occurs mostly when architectural elements, forests etc are involved. This can often result in weird effects like buildings which appear to be falling on themselves, walls which appear to be unnaturally curved or trees and lamp-posts which appear to be leaning.
Perspective Distortion can often be the difference between a stunning and an average photograph. Thankfully this is something which can be digitally rectified. ShiftN is a freeware which is capable of analyzing your photograph and automatically correcting any perspective distortion. ShiftN attempts to detect the lines present in your photograph and tilts the photograph accordingly to restore correct perspective. In most cases the auto-adjust option does the job. However, if your photograph has unrelated lines in the background then ShiftN may get it wrong. In such cases you can manually deselect the irrelevant lines by click with your mouse (or using Del key).
The best feature of ShiftN is its batch processor. The batch processor enables processing of multiple photographs without manual intervention. This can be a godsend to people with loads of photographs which suffer from perspective distortion.
ShiftN worked wonderfully on all the photographs in my collection. In all of the cases auto-optimisation was sufficient. ShiftN is a real gem that almost no one seems to be aware of. While there other software like Picasa do offer basic perspective correction, ShifN’s batch processing capability makes it a must have.
Download ShiftN (5.66 MB)
ShiftN Webpage
Platforms Supported : Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 2000, Windows 7, Windows XP
License : Freeware
Version Reviewed : 3.5
True… the batch processing thing is great… but photoshop’s better for the moment I guess… but great for beginners nonetheless.
Animesh´s last blog ..Just a bad day
Yeah. You can easily do it in PS. But never the less it will take you 5 mins per photograph. With this tool it will take you less than 5 sec per photograph. And the result was perfect in all of my test cases.
Actually, using PS for something like this is an overkill.
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Ya… but there’s a thing called actions and droplets in photoshop. U can tweak them to perform batch operations. After that it’s only drag and drop…. and ho! everything will be perfect again.
Learnt that functionality in photoshop only a few days ago…. and believe me its damn great and damn customizable!
Animesh´s last blog ..Just a bad day
How will you create an action that works on all images in PS? Different images have different amount and types of perspective distortion. Some images be require clockwise rotation, some may require anticlockwise rotatoin, some may require perspective transformation and so on. It all depends on the original image.
This software automates the process by analysing the lines in the images. I am not sure you can create an action to correct perspecive distortion (that all work on a large set of images) in PS.
Well of course it won’t work on all images…. but yet it can be made to do so if I make the action pause and ask me to fill in the details… well then it won’t be that easy, but I think the results can be great.
PS: I have a mortal fear of all image manipulating softwares other than PS. I have tried out lots like Gimp, Hugin, and lot of other specialty softwares, yet none could match the finesse of photoshop. So I am kinda wary of this as well. And well let’s face it, perspective distortion is actually a rare thing (I don’t remember it ever happening to me), and it is happens I think that would make a better photograph. But then opinions are bound to vary (otherwise they wouldn’t have been called ‘opinions’ I guess).
Animesh´s last blog ..Just a bad day
Perspective distortion can be used for artistic effect and I have seen photographs doing it. However, in most of the cases it detracts from the beauty of the photograph (e.g. the image I used in this post – the original one looks weird).
And I am not sure it can be done in PS using actions at all. What kind of user input will you take? It wont be a feasible solution.
And as far as image editing solutions go – I agree. PS is the best options. Nothing else is comparable. However, you are making a slight mistake here. ShiftN isnt really another PS or GIMP. Its a very simple software. And basically all you need to do is click a button.
And you are a good photographer, so you are less likely to mess up and have perspective distortion in your photographs.
User input means I will leave it to the user to adjust the angles, and the directions. The action will just make the requisite tools and windows pop up in this face.
Well the original one does look wierd (kinda like the Leaning Tower of Pisa). How did you actually manage to click that? I don’t think I could even if I wanted to…
And by the way, you venturing into Durgapur anytime soon?
Well, asking user for angles etc isnt feasible since no one will be able to provide the exact angle. Anyway, it wont be too much different from letting the user tilt the images and resize it manually. It would be time consuming. And if you have 50 images it would take atleast 2-3 hours to process them using Photoshop.
Hey I didn’t make a mistake there…. I mentioned “and lot of other specialty softwares”.
Nice tool Pallab, I used the perspective corrector in Picasa before this but will add this tool to my collection. Nice find.
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Well then, now that the big fight is over i can enter the arena just to say that this software works so perfectly on any image, no matter how distorted it is. I loved it, and compared to photoshop, it is 5 MB in size and a dedicated application. Photoshop is the mother of all image editing, but a dedicated application has it’s own stand.
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