04 Keystone Horizontal tool
Now I can see about fixing that horizontal keystoning. The Keystone tool is on the top toolbar, and you can select the Keystone Horizontal option from its drop-down menu…
05 Lining up horizontals
This tool gives you two horizontal bars, with control handles at each end. You use these to align the bars with two lines in the image which should be parallel. These control handles have small dots in the centre which offer pinpoint precision, even without zooming in. This is also a good test of the lens profile correction too, and it’s good to see that the lines in my image are now perfectly straight, with no sign of bowing.
At this point, you’ll just have two converging control bars – the image will look just the same. The change happens when you click the ‘Apply’ button in the centre.
06 The straightened version
Now you can see the control bars are level and parallel, as is the picture itself. Around the edges you can see the distorted areas that the tool has had to discard. These are greyed out and will disappear when you choose another tool. The exported image will be cropped automatically.
• Here’s tip number two. If your picture is skewed or rotated after you’ve applied this correction, it’s because you’ve got one of your keystoning control bars crossed up. It’s easy to do as you move them around trying to find the best alignment, and there are no left/right symbols on the control points to help you. You’ll need to go back and see which of the control bars needs to be swapped around.
07 The finished picture
I’m surprised at how well Capture One Pro has straightened this shot, and I already know what it can do. The lens profile has removed all traces of distortion, even though it wasn’t exactly the right one, and the horizontal keystone tool has worked brilliantly.
Like I said at the start, I think the converging verticals in this shot are part of its appeal, but this only works because everything else is dead straight.