N-Photo

PROJECT FIVE/TEACH YOURSELF LIGHTROOM

Fix lens distortion

George Cairns helps you set up and apply lens profiles in Lightroom to

automatically remove unwanted lens distortion, colour fringing and more

W

hat you see with the

naked eye isn’t always

what you get in a photo.

When shooting with a

wide-angle lens, for example,

the edges of the frame can

become distorted, with lines

appearing curved instead of

straight. This barrel (outward) or

pincushion (inward) distortion

is especially noticeable when

looking at architectural photos.

Cheaper lenses can also add

colour-related artefacts to a

subject. When faced with a

high-contrast edge (such as a

white swan against a dark blue

lake), you may find fringes of

purple at the edges of your

subject. This chromatic

aberration, as it’s known, is

caused by the lens’s inability to

focus different wavelengths of

light onto the same spot on your

camera’s sensor.

Also, when you zoom out with

your lens to capture a wider view

of a landscape, the frame can

become darker at the edges and

corners. You’ll also notice darker

edge colours and tones when

using a wider aperture. This

vignetting effect occurs

because different amounts of

light are entering the edge of the

lens compared to the centre,

causing the corners of the image

to become incorrectly exposed.

Fortunately, Lightroom’s Lens

Corrections panel has all the

tools you need to counteract

barrel and pincushion distortion,

chromatic aberration and

vignetting. Thanks to its

collection of Lens Profiles,

Lightroom can counteract these

problems automatically, so that

your photos will look more like

the scene did when you saw it

with the naked eye.

The mission

O To c o r re c t l e n s-

created errors

in Lightroom

Time

O Five minutes

Skill level

O Beginner

O Intermediate

O Advanced

Kit needed

O Lightroom 5 or later

Lightroom’s Lens Corrections panel has all

the tools you need to counteract distortion,

chromatic aberration and vignetting

NIKON SKILLS TEACH YOURSELF LIGHTROOM

BEFORE

AFTER

52 March 2016 Download the start image(s) at bit.ly/start-56