03 DxO ViewPoint 2 and Lightroom
The automatic lens correction profiles do appear to be enabled in the Lightroom plug-in, but this offers a different problem. ViewPoint 2 needs EXIF shooting information stored in the original file, whereas if you’re working with RAW files in Lightroom, it will generate a TIFF version to send to ViewPoint 2. This does not contain the EXIF data ViewPoint 2 needs (or at least it didn’t in my case), so it then prompts you to locate the original file.
OK, well that’s not too bad, except that ViewPoint 2 does not default to the location of the file you’re attempting to edit. You’re left to navigate there manually – and when you want to edit another image, you’ll then have to navigate to that one manually too, I guess. I hope this isn’t a permanent restriction.
04 Rectangular correction
I’ll worry about the lens corrections another time – now I want to see what the perspective corrections can do. This photograph of a shop front in Italy is a perfect example because I shot it face-on so I know it ought to be perfectly rectangular.
And to make completely sure, I’ve opened the Perspective panel and selected the Rectangle tool. This displays a tool with four corner control points, and what you need to do is find an object in the frame which you know to be rectangular, then drag these control points over the corners. The magnified Loupe display at the bottom of the tools panel on the right will help you position them perfectly.
05 The corrected image
Now, when you click the Apply button at the bottom right of the image, you should find the perspective is fixed – or at least a lot closer to being fixed. My picture still doesn’t look completely square, probably because the building itself has a few skewed edges, so I’ll need to see what other tools I can use to get it looking right.
First, though, you’ll see that ViewPoint 2 has left black ‘wedges’ along the edges of the picture where it’s carried out its geometric adjustments. These will need to be cropped off…