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$15 Lightroom 2.0 Plugin that Auto Corrects Lens Distortion
I am writing about this program before I’ve had a chance to test it. But if you like what it promises, you can download a copy of PTLens at http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html. There’s a free trial that will for for 10 shots. If you like the way it works and what it does, you can buy it for $15 and the license you get is guaranteed to be good for any update they ever make. Heck, I’d spend that for the worst program on the planet if its promises were at all intriguing to me. The program works as a Lightroom 2.0 plug-in. They haven’t said whether it will work in the public beta, so it may be some time before I’ll actually know how well it works. So I’ll let you know in a comment I’ll make within a few days of being able to actually found out. For the same reason, I can’t yet provide any screen shots.
So what does PTLens claim to do that made me so anxious to get my hands on it? I have been wishing for some time that Lightroom’s Lens Corrections included perspective, pincushion, and barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, and fisheye distortion. Of course, you can do most of these things in Photoshop, but PTLens seems to be saying that they do all the lens distortion corrections automatically as soon as it reads the metadata for your file.
One of the things that PTLens isn’t guilty of is lacking profiles for any but Nikon and Canon DSLRs. There are already profiles for most any camera you’re likely to have if it’s more than a few months old because the publisher offers to make profiles for any camera for which the user will send them prescribed test shots. The PTLens folks then make up profiles for your camera and then publish them so that everyone who has the same make, model, and lenses will also have profiles. (Hint: If I were the camera manufacturer, I’d supply those tests to these guys a few days before the camera was released.)
The program automatically knows what profiles to use because it gets the camera, model, lens, zoom focal length, f-stop, etc from the metadata of the file it’s been asked to correct. Of course, your camera and lens combination has to be on it’s profile list or you’ll have to do the test shots to put it there. If you go to the website mentioned in the first paragraph, you'll find an extensive list of already available profiles. I have a Sony A-700 and a Pentax K-20D. Both cameras, most of their compatible lenses (including many from Tokina, Tamron, and Sigma are on the list.
Oh...and the program does work with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, so you probably do have a way to check it out right now.
The web site you point to says that it's an external editor for Lightroom and a plug-in for Photoshop and Aperture. That makes it a lot less interesting for me, I'm afraid. A Lightroom plug-in that did this would have been amazing.
You are so right, it is an external editor...not a true plugin. So you're probably going to want to do all your other adjustments first, then correct the distortion stuff. You're still not going to have to open Photoshop in order to make those corrections and PTLens is a much smaller program. Besides, something that does the job better and more automatically and that you can incorporate, at least to some extent, into your Lightroom workflow and that costs only $15 and is likely to have the profiles for your cameras and lenses is a bloody big deal, as far as I'm concerned. You can wait for a "real" plugin if you want, though.
I do take your point Ken. However what really excited me was the possibility that Lightroom 2.0 had an API which made this sort of plug-in possible. I you could have done lens correction as a plug-in (i.e. as a non destructive change to the image) then a whole lot of other plug-ins would have been possible (e.g. Noise Ninja).
I have been using this program for a few weeks. It works pretty well and it's cheaper than DXO Optics if you don't need all of the extras. It works like the edit in photoshop menu. Makes a copy, does the corrections and when you click apply it goes back to lightroom with the corrections.
PTLens has been around a while and is quite well known for getting the distortion correction job done without the bells & whistles (and cost) of programs such as DxO Pro. One very nice fact is that the author will profile your lens for free if you take calibration shots according to his instructions. This lens will then go into the database for everyone to use. I did this with the Tamron 24-135mm and the turn-around time was very quick. So, don't worry about having a less common lens that isn't in the current database.
Can someone advise why i should continue usinig lightroom over google's picasa? should i look at aperture? i swear picasa is easier to use and does as good a job as lightroom. it also handles raw very well.
This is a very nice external editor. Sure it would be nice if it was a plugin, but the overhead of switching to it isn't that bad.
Oh, by the way, the price is up to $25.
Even so, this is a good addition to Lightroom.
Harry
It is a great software, does a simple thing (from the user's perspective) that camera manufacturers should have done from the beginning to correct what their crappy lenses screw up. Too bad it cannot fit into the RAW workflow.