Question for photographers here using mobile phone cameras

jimbo45 · Nov 18, 2022

Hi folks

Is there any software around that can "simulate" the Pan and shift tilt lenses back in the days of film cameras. Using a mobile phone it's very difficult to get good vertical architectural shots. I still sometimes use the old I have the old pro adapter for FD lenses which work excellently on a Canon EOS DSLR (1.25 stop adjustment needed) but carrying around a load of lenses is often a problem in todays increasingly crowded and controlled travelling conditions.

Mobile phone lenses have improved no end but while one can fix things like Depth of field via decent software there's not much around that can do "Verticals" properly.

Any ideas -- or any decent filters / effects in the latest versions of Photoshop. (Pro versions).

Cheers
jimbo

kelper · Nov 18, 2022

Yes there is a brilliant program. I'll try and find it.

Bree · Nov 18, 2022

jimbo45 said:
Any ideas -- or any decent filters / effects in the latest versions of Photoshop. (Pro versions).

Irfranview with some plugins can do that....

EFFECTS - (version 4.59): contains image effects and allows IrfanView to load Adobe Photoshop 8BF filters...

IrfanView PlugIns

www.irfanview.com

kelper · Nov 18, 2022

I used to have a German program that would correct architectural photos automatically. But is was a long time ago - still looking.

I found it ShiftN

barman58 · Nov 18, 2022

Pan & tilt is still available and used extensively by pro Architectural photographers, but it's a limited market so prices are higher than for regular lenses, and so often they still use the old cameras for film but with a digital back.

Most if not all high level photo editing software have options to correct distortion and some pros prefer this method as it is more flexible that the specialist cameras, of course you really need the large size, high quality images to feed into the software

There is NIK Perspective effects which is part of the NIK collection 5 and may be available separately, it was originally released as a stand alone application

The latest Affinity Photo will probably have options, and it's heavily discounted at present - I'll check

Edit

It does and it looks quite powerful using algorithms to allow you to work on one plane whilst it handles the other connected planes

It's on free trial at the moment I believe, may be an idea to try

mart44 · Nov 18, 2022

Maybe not a particularly well-known image program but 'Xara Photo & Graphics Designer' includes a correction function for this.

barman58 · Nov 18, 2022

That's a name I've not heard for a long while - to be honest I never realised it was still going - I'll have to take a look

kelper · Nov 18, 2022

ShiftN did this for me. The left-hand photo would need to be cropped. Adjustments can be made - it's not 100% right but good for an automatic program!

mart44 · Nov 18, 2022

The program availble

barman58 said:
That's a name I've not heard for a long while - to be honest I never realised it was still going - I'll have to take a look

The program on the Xara site looks to be only the Cloud subscription model but the stand alone 'buy once' program (the one I have) comes from Magix software.

The Picture Editor – Xara Photo & Graphic Designer

The Picture Editor Xara Photo & Graphic Designer offers a broad spectrum of options for editing photos.

www.magix.com

mart44 · Nov 18, 2022

The trouble with using an editing program is the process can trim off the sides of photos. To help overcome this, the result can arguably look better if the photo is then widened to the same size of the original, as was done here. This photo was processed using Corel PaintShop Pro. The anti-aliasing looked better than the Xara program.

Sometimes, no one program can be the best at all things. Although PSP looked better to me at the actual job. the resizing and borders were easier done using Xara.

jimbo45 · Nov 18, 2022

barman58 said:
Pan & tilt is still available and used extensively by pro Architectural photographers, but it's a limited market so prices are higher than for regular lenses, and so often they still use the old cameras for film but with a digital back.

Most if not all high level photo editing software have options to correct distortion and some pros prefer this method as it is more flexible that the specialist cameras, of course you really need the large size, high quality images to feed into the software

There is NIK Perspective effects which is part of the NIK collection 5 and may be available separately, it was originally released as a stand alone application

The latest Affinity Photo will probably have options, and it's heavily discounted at present - I'll check

Edit

It does and it looks quite powerful using algorithms to allow you to work on one plane whilst it handles the other connected planes

It's on free trial at the moment I believe, may be an idea to try

Thanks

@kelper
@mart44

and others --thanks for suggestions -- nice to see there are still plenty of photographers around !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

barman58 · Nov 18, 2022

Jimbo,

This guy is a Pro architectural photographer and I have found his videos very informative ( he does other forms of Photography too that is more direct help to me) a watch of some of his output should give you several options and ideas

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anthony+turnham+architectural+perspective+editing

jimbo45 · Nov 18, 2022

barman58 said:
Jimbo,

This guy is a Pro architectural photographer and I have found his videos very informative ( he does other forms of Photography too that is more direct help to me) a watch of some of his output should give you several options and ideas

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anthony+turnham+architectural+perspective+editing

Thanks again

Cheers
jimbo

bobkn · Nov 18, 2022

"professional" software, Photoshop for example, can do perspective correction.

However, it can give some odd-looking results, because it doesn't correct things in 3D. Not really a substitute for a shift lens.

hdmi · Nov 20, 2022

In GIMP, you can open the perspective tool by pressing Shift + P. Under tool options where it says ‘direction’ choose ‘corrective (backwards)’. Under ‘clipping’ choose ‘clip’. Move the handles that are at the corners of the image so that they are aligned with the rectangle you are trying to extract. Press the Enter key.

Like @bobkn has said, this doesn't correct things in 3D. But, you can still use specialized software tools for 3D modeling and rendering techniques (although I guess this still falls somewhat beyond the scope of mainstream photo editing skills, even today...) to try and work around these limitations. A simple approach to tackle this specific problem of localized variations in the warping that goes on is to divide the pic up across multiple planes when possible, which can tend to be a bit time consuming if they are many. I sometimes use Krita to conjure the individual pieces back together again after I have extracted them (one by one, with GIMP like how I explained above). Krita gives the ability to use Perspective grids and lets you rotate in 3D. Perspective Projection

The reason why I prefer GIMP to perform the extractions is that Krita's Perspective transform tool and Warp transform tool still aren't perfected yet, but nevertheless you can choose to use Krita to rotate the individual pieces in 3D as a nice workaround to this, and use Perspective grids so that─next─it takes less effort to align each four-sided polygon.

jimbo45 · Nov 20, 2022

hdmi said:
In GIMP, you can open the perspective tool by pressing Shift + P. Under tool options where it says ‘direction’ choose ‘corrective (backwards)’. Under ‘clipping’ choose ‘clip’. Move the handles that are at the corners of the image so that they are aligned with the rectangle you are trying to extract. Press the Enter key.

Like @bobkn has said, this doesn't correct things in 3D. But, you can still use specialized software tools for 3D modeling and rendering techniques (although I guess this still falls somewhat beyond the scope of mainstream photo editing skills, even today...) to try and work around these limitations. A simple approach to tackle this specific problem of localized variations in the warping that goes on is to divide the pic up across multiple planes when possible, which can tend to be a bit time consuming if they are many. I sometimes use Krita to conjure the individual pieces back together again after I have extracted them (one by one, with GIMP like how I explained above). Krita gives the ability to use Perspective grids and lets you rotate in 3D. Perspective Projection

The reason why I prefer GIMP to perform the extractions is that Krita's Perspective transform tool and Warp transform tool still aren't perfected yet, but nevertheless you can choose to use Krita to rotate the individual pieces in 3D as a nice workaround to this, and use Perspective grids so that─next─it takes less effort to align each four-sided polygon.

Hi there
GIMP is an excellent program which has significantly improved in the last few years and is still free. Works also both on Linux and Windows too.

Here's it on Linux with kernel 6.0.9 and you can see the interface is identical to Windows.

Seems a pity though while the lenses etc of mobile phone cameras have also significantly improved - the software to deal with using a tiny lens on a small body with minimal aperture control has failed to keep pace. Most things now seem geared to people taking "Home Movies".

Other people's Holiday videos and family movies I'm afraid I find one of the biggest bores on the planet. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that view even if people are too embarrased to say it.

Cheers
jimbo

barman58 · Nov 20, 2022

The specialist Image processing applications are embracing the increase in quality in Phone optics I noticed recently that DXO's PhotoLab 6 includes a lot more Phone lenses included in it's database For those unaware DXO maintain the optical lens database for Cameras [mostly for DSLRs but the range is increasing to include more all in ones, and phones]

The database is made from taking test shots of detailed grids with each lens attached the major camera bodies, [at various Focus distances, aperture, and shutter speeds ] that the lens will attach to

This data is processed to provide a set of filters for each combination which can be used in their software to automatically correct any minor faults or quirks that each combination has.

By the way, They also produce one of the better perspective correction applications, DxO ViewPoint 4. and some of that expertise is included in one of the options of Photolab

@jimbo45 Both of the applications have free trials :wink:

Anibor_11 · Nov 20, 2022

Snapseed. Simple, elegant, free.

Snapseed_ Captura de pantalla 2022-11-20 084654.jpg

badrobot · Nov 20, 2022

I am not sure what phone do you have but my Samsung S21 Ultra have a built-in editing tool than can somehow do horizontal and vertical correction/enhancement. It even automatically fixes not just the building but also the trees and the entire streetscape and fill up the entire image.

Using the sample photo posted above, here is the before: