Nikon software

George Cairns uses Capture NX-D to remove lens-created distortions

Remove lens-created distortions and colour fringing using Nikon Capture NX-D

After light travels through your Nikon’s lens it is focused onto a specific point on the camera’s sensor. However, the image captured via your camera’s lens may not be an accurate representation of reality due to a variety of lens-related factors. Camera lenses differ in their manufacturing quality, and various types of lens (such as telephoto and wide-angle) are prone to capturing a distorted version of the subject.

A fisheye lens captures a very wide field of view, but to do so it dramatically warps the captured scene and make it looks spherical (see page 42). This is an extreme example of lens distortion, but all lenses will introduce some degree of distortion. A wide-angle zoom zoomed out to its widest point, for example, can add barrel distortion (see page 112): this causes the image to bulge outwards from the middle (as if it’s wrapped round a barrel). When zoomed in, the same lens may introduce pincushion distortion: this is the opposite of barrel distortion, and causes the image to pinch inwards from the edges (much like the edges of a pincushion are pinched inwards).

In addition to geometric distortion, lenses can also introduce artefacts such as chromatic aberration, where colour fringes appear along high-contrast edges. Capture NX-D can read a photograph’s metadata, discover what lens and settings were used, and then counteract any distortions and colour fringing to create a more accurate representation of the subject.