The Best Method of Defishing a Fisheye Photo

Read the full article: http://www.lonelyspeck.com/defish/
In this video lesson I'll show you the best way to defish a fisheye photo. We'll be using Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop with the Image Trends Fisheye-Hemi Plugin to convert a fisheye photo to rectilinear.

Visit http://www.lonelyspeck.com for more photography and astrophotography tutorials.

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop: https://creative.adobe.com/plans/phot...

Image Trends Fisheye-Hemi: http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/product...

Equipment Used:
Fujifilm X-E1 and Rokinon 8mm f/2.8 Fisheye
Fujifilm X-T1 and Rokinon 8mm f/2.8 Fisheye II

Recorded on a Canon EOS M and EF-M 22mm f/2.0 STM

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Closed Caption:

yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
everyone I mean Norman from lonely speck
and today I want to talk to you about
fisheye lenses and how to use them for
landscape photography
I really like the idea of a fisheye lens
especially for night photography because
they can give us a really wide view of
the sky usually fisheye lenses aren't
used for serious landscape photography
because they tend to curve the horizon
if it's not perfectly centered in the
frame
luckily there are some methods that we
can use to correct for the distortion of
the fisheye lens
in this video lesson i'll show you my
favorite way of d fishing photos using
adobe lightroom and adobe photoshop
ok so a really common method of
correcting fisheye lenses is to use a
lens correction profile to create a
rectilinear image
this will result in an image that looks
like it was made with a non-fish I
rectilinear lens so in this example I
have a photograph taken with a rokinon
8-millimeter f 2.8 fish eye on a
fujifilm xt one
I friend mostly sky in this photo and as
a result the horizon is really distorted
now before I can fix the distortion in
the image i need to download a lens
profile using Adobe's free lens profile
downloader it gives us access to an
online database of different lens
profiles now my particular camera and
lens combination are not listed here but
i did some searching around and I found
that the cannon profile for the samyang
broken on eight millimeter works pretty
well for my setup
i'm going to go ahead and click download
for this profile and return to adobe
lightroom we can apply lens corrections
in adobe lightroom pretty easily by
entering the develop module and it's
going down on the right tool bar until
we see the lens Corrections tool and I'm
going to just select the profile here
for the rokinon eight millimeter
and you can see that the
if I'll straighten everything out it
looks like my horizons a little bit
tilted so i'll fix that real quick
now one of the problems with this method
is that it crops out a lot of the
original image for example if we switch
back to the original image we can see
how a lot of the corners of the image
are completely cropped out and it makes
the edges of the frame look really
stretched and blurry
now this is the major disadvantage of
deficient a fisheye photo with the
traditional rectilinear method of
Correction using a lens profile
now I want to show you a better method
of d fishing that uses a special plugin
for adobe photoshop called fish I Hemi
so let's open up another example image
in Adobe Photoshop
now bye
the fall with a landscape oriented photo
the fish i have any plugin won't be able
to properly correct are curved horizon
I'll demonstrate this by running the
fish i have been plugged in with raw
image i'll choose filter image trends
and then wish i had me to full frame and
you can see that it didn't really change
the photo for the better our horizon is
still super curved
now the reason that the fish i have any
plugin doesn't work on a photo like this
is because it's made to correct
distortion along only one axis of the
photo i'll demonstrate this by pulling
up a photo with some buildings when i
run fish i had me on in
you can see that all the vertical lines
are straightened but all the other lines
that are more horizontal like the power
lines are curved is even more apparent
how fish I having works when we apply
the filter to an image of just a plain
grid
so when applying the filter only
vertical lines are affected with
horizontal lines remain pretty much the
same
now this is problematic for original
image because we want to be able to
apply the correction to the distorted
horizon line
so in order to get fish I happy to work
we need to trick it into thinking that
we have a portrait oriented photograph
so that it affects horizontal lines
instead
so in order to trick the fish I help me
plug in into thinking that we have a
portrait oriented photograph will adjust
the canvas size to make the image seemed
tall
this will change the direction that fish
I had me applies the correction -
so we can use it to fix the curved
horizon line so to do this i'll just
select image and then canvas size and
the first thing to do is to select the
anchor point
that's closest to our horizon position
so I from the horizon on the bottom of
the photo so i'll select the bottom
center anchor point
setting the anchor point here will tell
Photoshop that we want to only extend
the canvas upward
I like to adjust by percentage and
usually use a height of around two
hundred and twenty-five percent you can
use other percentage numbers to affect
the results but this is usually a good
start because it keeps the 3 by 2 aspect
ratio of the original image once that's
set you can click ok and you can see
that that extended our canvas above the
photo
now when we run the fish I hemi filter
it will think that we have a portrait
oriented photograph and should
straighten our horizon
all right so it looks like it over
corrected the image just a little bit
depending on where your horizon this
position in the photograph
you might need to move the image around
on the canvas to adjust the amount of
correction that fish I Hemi is applying
so in this case i'll go ahead and undo
the filter and then I'll unlock the
background layer by double-clicking on
it in the layers palette to turn it into
a new layer and click ok and this will
allow us to move the image around on the
canvas so i'll select the move tool and
drag the layer up a bit and I'm holding
shift to keep the image centered in the
canvas
the closer to the center of the canvas
at the images the less extreme the
distortion correction will be when we
run fish I Hemi
so I'm just eyeballing the amount to
move it once you d fished a few
landscape photos you'll get used to wear
to set it on the canvas
so once it's set will need to flatten
the image by selecting the options
drop-down in the layers palette and
selecting flatten image and then we're
ready to run fish i have me again
all right looks like we did it pretty
good now you can see that the horizon
line looks pretty straight
all we need to do now is use the crop
tool and crop out the extra canvas on
the image and the horizon is just a
little bit tilted here so also rotate
the crop just a tad so that everything
looks straight
so if we compare this to the original
you can see that did a really good job
of straightening the horizon and it also
retain a lot of the original image we
only lost a very small amount of the
bottom corners of the image i really
like this method of d fishing it's a
little more work than just running a
lens profile correction but the results
are much better
we barely lose any of the image and we
don't get those ugly stretched corners
at the rectilinear correction method
created
i also really like the fish I any plugin
because it allows us to use the
photoshop actions and basket
functionality to process lots of images
automatically
this is especially nice for time last
recordings that were made with a fisheye
lenses so if you want to get a lot out
of your fish eye lens the fish i have
any plugin is definitely worth the
thirty dollar price of admission
but keep in mind that it's also not
doing anything that we can't mimic with
the default tools that are already in
Photoshop
so now i want to show you a way to do
the same sort of correction but without
using the fish i have any plugin so to
demonstrate this
I'll return to the original uncorrupted
photo and this time I'll turn the
background layer into a new layer by
double clicking it and clicking ok and
the new layer dialog and then we'll try
to mimic the way that fish I hemi warps
the photo i'll select edit transform and
then work and then it can drag the
corners of the image down on the canvas
until the horizon appear straight now
while I'm doing this i'll try to keep
the edges of the warp tangent to the
canvas so that we don't lose too much of
the corners of the photo
i'm also trying to make sure that I keep
the vertical guide lines perfectly
straight
once it looks roughly good we can hit
enter and apply the work and then all we
need to do is crop the photo of it to
get rid of any transparent edges that
might have showed up during the warping
and i'll hit enter to apply the crop
now we should be able to compare this
again with the original photo and you
can see that it's pretty close to what
we saw with fish I Hemi
now let's do one final comparison of
this method with the more traditional
rectilinear corrections that we did in
the beginning of the video
the rectilinear correction is on the
left and the fish I hemi style
correction is on the right and you can
see that the image on the right doesn't
look as stretched in the corners and it
retains a lot more of the original image
on the left and right sides of the frame
now just i'll add in one last bonus on
this video i want to show you one other
cool trick that this method lets us do
I'll open up another Astro photo and use
the same method of extending the canvas
and applying Fisher Hemi
now you can see that we got a nice
straight horizon line but the radio
tower still looks a little bit curved so
what I'll do here is actually run wish I
had me a second time to correct for the
curve radio tower
so first I need to crop the image and in
order to run fish I help me again i have
to flatten it first and once it flattens
i can run fish i hit me again and
that'll correct for the curvature in the
radio tower
it's a little bit subtle but if we
switch back and forth we can see how it
straightened out the curvature and the
radio tower
so by running the plug-in twice we
managed to correct for both the horizon
distortion and the curvature in the
radio tower now the uses for this method
are actually pretty wide because we can
run fish i had me twice in two different
directions
we can also use it for making super wide
architectural shots i'll demonstrate
this by running the plug-in on the
alleyway example shot again I'll first
run it wants to correct for the vertical
lines and you can see that the power
lines still look curved now we can run
it again using our new method of
tricking fish i had me into thinking
that we have a portrait oriented
photograph
so the same stuff here as before I'll
extend the canvas to two hundred and
twenty-five percent on the height and
the horizon centered on this photo so
i'll leave the anchor point Center as
well i'll click ok and run fish I help
me again
now it's not perfect but you can see
that it straighten out the power lines a
little bit better i could probably short
in the candidates just a little bit to
make that correction a little more
accurate but you get the idea so i'll go
ahead and drop the image and save it now
let's go back to lightroom and compare
this method with the more traditional
rectilinear d fishing method
so here's the photo with the corrections
applied and for reference here's the
original one corrected photo and here
they are side by side
now if we select the original and apply
lens profile corrections to it and
compare it again you can see that it's
missing a whole lot of the original
image this entire garage door is missing
from the left side of the frame and if
we look at the corners we can see that
the image is stretched and appears to be
slightly lower resolution so the method
that i showed you here give us much
better results than the traditional
rectilinear d fish method i really enjoy
discovering this way of the fishing
because it allowed me to breathe new
life into many of my old forgotten fish
I photos as a result my fisheye lens is
transformed into one of my favorite
tools for landscape astrophotography so
really hope you like this video if you
want to see more photography and
astrophotography tutorials please
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see ya