"Flattening" out the fish eye effect

[AndrewWG]

Does anyone know of a program that will essentially flatten out a fish eye photo? I took a photo of a group of people the other night and on the edges the people are much wider than they actually are. I would like to lessen this as much as possible. I was using the Sigma 10-20mm lens. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sdshutterbug]

I would think the "remove distortion" slider in Photoshop's Distortion-->Lens Correction filter would help a little with that, but I don't have a UWA so I've never tried it with such an extreme effect. Hope that helps!

 

[Groucho]

The program you're looking for is PTLens... does other stuff but is best known (that I've heard) for straightening out fisheye shots.

 

[YesDear]

You can do it in Photoshop and Capture NX will do it with Nikon lens.

 

[Code]

You said you were using the Sigma 10-20, so what you're talking about isn't fisheye, it's just the inherent perspective distortion you get when shooting rectilinear ultrawide and then viewing it on a small screen. (If you were standing at the appropriate distance directly in front of a very large print of your photo, you wouldn't see the stretching.)

The only solution is to intentionally introduce barrel distortion which will fix your stretched out people, but will also crop a significant amount and curve straight lines in your photo.

 

[AndrewWG]

Thanks everyone!

Groucho, yes, that is what I was thinking of. Thanks for reminding me of the name of that one.

Code, you are exactly right. It isn't true fisheye by any means but those edges do give that effect. I will see what I can do.

Some people just may not be happy with this photo. Oh well, can't hit them all just right. I will see what I can do in photoshop before trying these other suggestions.

Thanks again!

 

[Code]

At the edges of a fisheye lens, things are compressed rather than stretched. Rectilinear UWA is a pretty different animal.

 

[zackiedawg]

It won't be an easy job either - rectilinear UWAs have usually quite a flattened frame throughout the center, then the ends bend a bit more. The Sigma 10-20 in particular does a fine job of keeping horizontal and vertical lines in alignment and without distortion through the main part of the frame, but then bends significantly in the two far ends. So a basic barrel correction unfortunately won't do the trick. You may have to use a grid overlay to manipulate just the left and right edges of the frame, or apply barrel correction as a new layer then erase the center portion to restore the original shot.

For the future, when using UWAs as portrait lenses for group shots, try to leave a little dead space at the left and the right, so it can be cropped out and avoid stretching anyone!

 

[AndrewWG]

It won't be an easy job either - rectilinear UWAs have usually quite a flattened frame throughout the center, then the ends bend a bit more. The Sigma 10-20 in particular does a fine job of keeping horizontal and vertical lines in alignment and without distortion through the main part of the frame, but then bends significantly in the two far ends. So a basic barrel correction unfortunately won't do the trick. You may have to use a grid overlay to manipulate just the left and right edges of the frame, or apply barrel correction as a new layer then erase the center portion to restore the original shot.

For the future, when using UWAs as portrait lenses for group shots, try to leave a little dead space at the left and the right, so it can be cropped out and avoid stretching anyone!

I agree. This job will be WAY above my capabilities the more I look at the shot. Oh well, it is ok. I have seen alot worse and luckily, the people on the end of the shot are not the smallest in the class so the effect isn't quite as noticable.

I have never seen this effect in my shots with this lens. I have also never taken group photos with it, so it was a shock to see the final shot. Live and learn. I would have tried to back up a bit if I had known. Next time I will.

 

[Groucho]

There's some info on correcting UWA distortion on this page at the PTLens site... scroll down to "Volume Anamorphosis" and follow along. Basically, they recommend using the "warp" Free Transform in Photoshop. Of course, you'll need to do a bit of cropping afterwards.