OT Deforming a picture

[Huge]

Photoshop's no better...

[Huge]

For basic fixes, Google Picassa is *much* better.

[Tim S]

Man at B&Q coughed up some electrons that declared:

Well, I would class it as a real man's tool rather than a holiday-snaps toy. For the odd bit of contrast adjustment and red-eye fixing, use whatever came free with the camera.

I had difficulty the first time I used it - it was discovering that "right click" paradigm was it's standard way of doing things that got me going (this was years ago).

They do have everything on the main image menu now, which helps.

It's one of those things - for the want of some initial effort, it can be a very useful tool (even for holiday snaps) and there are some good tutorial books (1/2" thin and to the point) available.

Not bad for something that is perhaps only one level down from software costing >500 quid.

:)

Cheers

Tim

[clumsy bastard]

PS is terrible when you first use it, you really do need some books, (its perspective crop in PS). I don't know what Gimp is like but a lot of packages I tried would not let me work with raw files in 16 bit mode. Ps now has a nice front end called camera raw that enables you to easily bmake the ajustments manually that your camera guesses when you shoot in jpeg mode.

[clumsy bastard]

yep, if you paid x thousands for a camera and lens, you don't want to throw away quality to save £300

[clumsy bastard]

yes, i took a photo of the pantheon with a fish eye close up and corrected the barrel effect with a PS plug in (PT lens or Panorama tools) so it looked like it was taken from a ladder 200 metres away, in other words with lens square on to centre of building. However, you cannot see the dome. Is it reality? Sort of.

[dennis]

You need one that shifts to correct perspective. One that tilts can change the depth of focus a bit but it doesn't correct perspective.

[Adrian C]

For even better basic,

I've given up on complicated installed packages for what I do. The integration of picnik within flickr is quite useful as well.

[Stuart Noble]

PhotoImpact is more of a happy medium

[djc]

[Appelation Controlee]

accurate shape (what we used to colloquially refer to as "square"), the image plane of the camera must be parallel to that of the subject. If you have a viewpoint that is perpendicular to the plane of the subject, that is easily achieved. So-called perspective control lenses have an image circle larger than the diameter of the image plane, so that the lens can be laterally displaced to the extent necessary to frame the subject area you want, whilst preserving the parallel relationship between subject and image planes.

[mark]

I would agree, you can make things parallel but you can't overcome perspective compression . e.g., a photo of a tall block of flats, you can make the sides parallel but the flats will look progressively squished as you progress upwards.

mark

[mark]

This is user friendly and free:

has this tool:

Deform Tool The versatile Deform tool lets you rotate, resize, skew, reshape and add perspective to any selection or layer. Powerful, yet easy to master, you'll be amazed by the look you can achieve with this tool.

mark

[clumsy bastard]

and they tend to be horribly expensive. If you can work with a high quality input and avoid being too extreme in the change, post processing is fine. (in extreme cases, say fisheye to "normal" conversions, you can get purple or green fringing, due to something to do with chromatic aberrations or whatever. To eliminate that [I can only talk of PS] you go into saturation and use the eyedropper to select the colour of the fringe and then desaturate it a fair bit).

Thinks: I wonder if anybody actually wanted to know that?

[The Natural Philosopher]

well it can be intelligently INTERPOLATED.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh.. I did a sunset shot and got a red fringe round a statue.

Wife photoshopped it out. And a recalcitrant lamp post too.

Final image was great.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Feel free.

[clumsy bastard]

so if I send you a pic of the back, you can turn it round to the front?

[terry]

Nah. Helping hands. Rather like getting your neighbour to assist you! Except doing it remotely and electronically. P.S. My neighbour fixing the heater blower in his commercial truck (lorry) came over looking for wiring connectors; fortunately we were able to find some. I'll get the assistance back and more anytime I need it. Day before it was another good neighbour who needed a certain size fuse for a radio. We had one and a spare or two. Again anytime we need a helping hand, a drive to the airport, check on the house while we are away etc. those guys will be on the spot and do as good a job or better than I preventing damage or fixing something. Good neighbours are worth having (and keeping)! Cheers.

[The Natural Philosopher]