Further to PTLens - and a (small) feature request

[greenmorpher]

I've just noticed an interesting thing with PTLens vis-à-vis its (Mac-only) sister program, LensFixCI (they use the same database).

LensFixCI -- which does not work with 64 bit, sadly -- has an "Aspect" tool so you can bring e.g. the height of a building back to normal after you have fixed vertical perspective. Just fixing the perspective tends to leave the building tall and thin. With the aspect tool you can reduce the height of the image to get the height and width of the subject back into proportion. Likewise with fixing horizontal perspective.

PTLens does not have this tool and Tom says the program as such is in maintenance mode now so he is not planning to add such a tool, although he is constantly adding new lens information to the database, of course.

In PL, you can adjust the height of the image with either the Rectify tool or by grabbing one of the Crop tool handles while holding down the control or command key.

I had actually tried to do this with the Rectify tool a number of times and found it not handy. You have to move one corner at a time, you have to guess horizontal, and while you are thinking about that, you have to maintain the position of the upright lines.

I just tried it using the Crop tool. Grabbing the middle green square and moving that while holding down the command key works fine except we need to be able to constrain movement to the vertical or horizontal. I tried the usual constraining key, shift, but it did not effect the movement. It is all too easy to slide off to the side -- adding a distortion to the picture just corrected.

Any restraint possible?

Best regards
Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
General Manager
Bushtrack Enterprises Ltd
http://www.bushtrackpng.com

[bkh]

I just tried it using the Crop tool. Grabbing the middle green square and moving that while holding down the command key works fine except we need to be able to constrain movement to the vertical or horizontal. I tried the usual constraining key, shift, but it did not effect the movement. It is all too easy to slide off to the side -- adding a distortion to the picture just corrected.

Yes, this definitely ought to work. Cmd-Shift restricts the movement to horizontal/vertical if you use the corner squares, and it's only logical to expect the middle ones to behave in the same way. Btw., I think that the crop tool should also have a "reset distortion" button.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Lundberg02]

I hope Gerhard will respond here. I think this is an important feature that should be added in the next dot release. Maybe the tool names should be looked at a duplicate Crop with specific perspective and aspect constraints should be substituted for Rectify.

[greenmorpher]

I just tried it using the Crop tool. Grabbing the middle green square and moving that while holding down the command key works fine except we need to be able to constrain movement to the vertical or horizontal. I tried the usual constraining key, shift, but it did not effect the movement. It is all too easy to slide off to the side -- adding a distortion to the picture just corrected.

Yes, this definitely ought to work. Cmd-Shift restricts the movement to horizontal/vertical if you use the corner squares, and it's only logical to expect the middle ones to behave in the same way.

The work around (now that I know this about the corners) is that you can pull down a guide line then bring the corners into line on that so you don’t have to guess the straight line. This, of course, is what the Rectify tool lacks.

Cheers, geoff

[bkh]

The work around (now that I know this about the corners) is that you can pull down a guide line then bring the corners into line on that so you don’t have to guess the straight line. This, of course, is what the Rectify tool lacks.

Now that you talk about guide lines: if you just want to shrink an entire image, you could also use the automatic guide line in the image centre – either switch automatic guide lines on in View -> Alignment helpers or temporarily activate them using the Alt key (if the latter is enabled under Preferences -> Display -> Guides – I think it is, by default).

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Ah, good one, Burkhard, regarding the automatic grid! (And even more, Huber Bros, of course!)

There is one thing, though. Do your distortions (corrections) then crop your image BEFORE you do your aspect correction. The do your whole of image crop tool. If you don’t get your crop tool point right on the automatic guide, it will slide over to the automatic guide before moving in the desired direction, adding a new distortion.

I guess I would prefer the standard shift key restraint.

A note about the Help.

Wishing to set the grid to my liking (I don't normally use Grids), I went to Help. it told me I could go this in "Display/Grid". There is a menu item "Layer/Display" which does not refer to this. Display/Grid is in the preferences.

It would be good if items in the Help included the full path to reach them starting at the menu bar -- in this case, PhotoLine/Preferences/Display/Grid. If I was reading through the Help in a serial manner, I would not need the full path because I would know that I was in the preferences section. But since the Help search took me straight to the item I didn't know immediately what section I should look in.

Cheers, geoff

[bkh]

I guess I would prefer the standard shift key restraint.

Totally agreed. The guide thing I suggested was just intended as a workaround until the shift key gets fixed (I believe this is just a bug/oversight).

Cheers

Burkhard.