Correcting fisheye distortion

[asharpe]

I may be purchasing a 17mm Takumar fisheye lens in the near future. So, I looked for various tools in PL to correct minimum (and maximum) distortion.

- Filter->Digital Camera->Lens Correction seems to be fairly minor adjustments
- Filter->Digital Camera->Rectify Mostly incomprehensible, but I did discover that I could select multiple points with shift. I could not get it to do anything I wanted, though.
- Effects->Distort->Outline Warping seems possible to get it to work

There's also some Distort with Grid stuff I found, but again, fairly incomprehensible as the the use of it. I am certain that there are many tools in PL that will do this effectively, but I guess I was looking for a photoshop-like grid with symmetrical pin-cushion/barrel adjustment. Is there such a tool?

[photoken]

I found this sample 17mm fisheye image on the Web:

outline warping original.jpg

As a side note: if you're buying a fisheye lens, you're buying the normal fisheye "distortion". If you don't like the fisheye look, then buy a wide-angle lens.

Having said that, the final result depends on how much correction you want. Outline Warping with these settings:

outline warping settings.png

gave me this result:

outline warping final.jpg

I corrected for the vertical lines, but at the expense of bizarre distortion at the bottom and top edges.

[photoken]

... but I guess I was looking for a photoshop-like grid with symmetrical pin-cushion/barrel adjustment. Is there such a tool?

Take a look at the Distort tool (grouped under the Liquify tool).

Here's the grid I set up:

distort tool grid.jpg

And the result:

distort tool final.jpg

[asharpe]

Youch! That distort tool is powerful, but a lot of work! And no way to have to do it's job symmetrically? Is there documentation on the tool?

And yes, I understand that a fisheye mean distortion, but there are ways to use it to minimize the distortion, which is what I will be using PL for...

Thanks for your examples!

[Juan]

What about using Filter-->Digital Camera-->Lens Corrections?
I applied the filter about 3 or 4 times with the lowest values -25%

Here is the result:

Lens corrections.jpg

Cheers
Juan

[photoken]

There's also Effects...Shape Tools...Vault. With these settings:

vault settings.png

(Choose the "Flat" preset.)

The result:

vault result.jpg

[asharpe]

Well, I didn't think about applying the Lens Distortion tool multiple times; that a nice idea!
And why is the tool that photoken used call *vault*? Perhaps because it will do vault-like archways? I never would have looked there, but it looks very good!