Perfect your perspective
Use the powerful Geometry tools to fix converging verticals and wonky frames.
Converging verticals occur when we angle our camera upwards towards a building or structure. The straight vertical edges of the building can lean in towards one another, making it look as if the building is toppling inwards. This effect is emphasised the closer you are to the building – and wider lenses can result in more pronounced distortion. You may be able to avoid converging verticals while taking the shot by stepping back, finding a higher vantage point or using a tilt-shift lens. If none of these options is possible, perspective issues can usually be fixed in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Here we’ve used Camera Raw to fix our photo, but if you’re a Lightroom user, you can use the identical tools in the Develop Module. The Geometry Panel offers a host of perspective-correcting tools. Several of these apply auto fixes, but there’s also manual control in the form of the Guided Tool. This lets you mark out lines along objects and shapes that you’d like to be either perfectly horizontal or vertical.
Using Warp Transform
Photoshop’s Warp Transform command can be a useful counterpart to the perspective correction tools in Camera Raw and Lightroom. It lets you add a grid of points over the image, then drag the grid points to warp parts of the image. What’s more, you can Shift-drag over a row or group of points and move them all at once. This can be very helpful, as geometry fixes can sometimes leave an image looking top-heavy or unbalanced. We can transform areas of the frame to shift the balance until the scene looks more natural.
The straight vertical edges of the building can lean in towards one another, making it look as if the building is toppling inwards. This effect is emphasised the closer you are to the building – and wider lenses can result in more pronounced distortion.
Fine-tune the lines
After dragging your guide lines, you may want to fine-tune them to ensure they match up with the objects in the scene. You can turn on Loupe View in the tool options (or press Shift-L). This gives you a magnified circle so you can see the objects you’re aligning with close-up. There’s also Constrain Crop, which gets rid of transparent areas.
Fix transparent areas
After using the Guided Tool, parts of the image may be cropped off. If you don’t want to lose them, use Scale to scale down slightly. You can also use Offset to shift in different directions, or hold Cmd/ Ctrl-Alt and drag the image while using the Guided Tool. If you don’t want to cut off the edges of the frame, you may prefer to fill the areas by going into in Photoshop and using the Content-Aware Fill Tool.
Apply lens correction
Before getting stuck in with the Guided Tool, it’s worth applying lens correction using the Optics Panel. Not to be confused with perspective correction in the Geometry Panel, lens correction fixes issues like barrel distortion and vignetting. Head to the Optics Panel and tick the Apply Lens Correction box. Camera Raw applies a fix based on the lens and camera used.
Use manual sliders
Perspective fixes may leave the image looking slightly unnatural or unbalanced, but you can use manual sliders to tweak things afterwards. Aspect lets you stretch the frame, which can counter extreme vertical corrections. Vertical and Horizontal can help if the geometry fix is a little too heavyhanded – sometimes a slight converging vertical can look more natural.
Auto buttons
At the top of the Geometry Panel are five Upright buttons. The last of these is Guided, but the other four let you apply auto corrections. Auto applies both vertical and horizontal corrections. Next come Level, for wonky horizons, and Vertical, for fixing tilt and converging verticals. Full tries to correct everything at once by snapping all lines to either a horizontal or vertical.
Drag guide lines
If the auto geometry buttons aren’t working for you, then you can manually correct horizontal and vertical lines using the Guided button. Identify a natural line in the scene that should be either perfectly horizontal or vertical. Grab the tool, then drag along the line. Nothing will happen at first, but when you drag a second line the image begins to conform to your edits. You are able to drag up to four lines.