Photoshop User - USA (2021-01)

MANUAL TRANSFORMS

Traditional plate cameras allow

photographers to maintain a

straight, vertical angle for the

camera back and, once locked

into position, independently adjust

the height and angle of the lens

relative to the back plate to adjust

the positioning of the subject within

the frame. This can be quite a tricky

procedure and usually requires a

fair amount of fine-tuning to achieve

the best combination of camera

plate movements. You can also

use tilt-shift lenses designed for

digital SLR or mirrorless cameras

to achieve similar results. Without

such cameras or specialist lenses,

you’ll need to find the optimum

angle from which to shoot to avoid

distortion, such as that caused by

converging verticals, or you can rely

on the Transform tools in Camera

Raw and Lightroom.

For architectural subjects,

I always recommend selecting

one of the Upright adjustments

to apply an instant auto transform

correction. And if that doesn’t

provide the degree of precision

required, then select the Guided

Upright option and manually add

constraints to define the edges

you wish to straighten.

With landscape images, like the waterfall example

shown in this article, Upright adjustments may still have

some effect, but if there are no obvious straight edges

in the scene for an Upright adjustment to refer to, such

adjustments may not always be meaningful. Therefore,

basic manual Transform adjustments may be the simplest

and most effective solution.

The Vertical slider can be used to correct for keystone

distortion such as when you’re photographing looking up

at a tall building, or looking down on a box. The Horizontal

slider can be used to correct for lateral distortion, where

the shooting angle perhaps appears to be too side-on.

In the example shown here, you can see how I applied

a negative manual Horizontal Transform adjustment to

correct for the image stretching on the right-hand side

of the frame.

In the As Shot version, the Canon printer in my office

looks a lot wider than a Desktop A2 printer! Likewise, the

plans chest below appears much wider than it really is.

Of course, in the corrected version, the iMac screen now

appears stretched. It’s essentially a balancing act to find

the optimum setting, but to my mind, the transformed

version appears to be more truthful to how my office

room looks in real life. n

“As shot” version

Horizontal Transform-corrected version

ALL IMAGES BY MARTIN EVENING

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JA N U ARY 2021