Simulate wide angle in Photoshop?

[msol]

All,

I was wondering whether I could somehow simulate the effect of a wide-angle lens in PhotoShop? Suppose I would take a 2 (or more?) shot panorama, and stich the shots to a wide format picture. Could I then somehow distort and crop the image such that it appears as if it was taken with a wide angle lense? For example, would the Sperize filter be of help, and if so, what would be the good settings?

I am going to experiment with this, but maybe one of you already invented this wheel?

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Marc.

[maderito]

All,

I was wondering whether I could somehow simulate the effect of a wide-angle lens in PhotoShop? Suppose I would take a 2 (or more?) shot panorama, and stich the shots to a wide format picture. Could I then somehow distort and crop the image such that it appears as if it was taken with a wide angle lense? For example, would the Sperize filter be of help, and if so, what would be the good settings?

I am going to experiment with this, but maybe one of you already invented this wheel?

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Kind regards,
Marc.

If you've experimented, you've probably already figured out more than I know.

Wide angle shots tend to have barrel distortion and convergance of vertical lines.

My understanding is that Photshop's spherize filter creates or corrects pincushion and barrel distortion. Vertical (and horizontal) line convergence can also be corrected in Photoshop -- e.g. by skewing an image while using the crop tool.

Note that if you use the spherize filter, make sure the spherize circle covers all the image elements that you want to distort. You can do this by making the canvas size bigger than the image. Run spherize and then crop the now spherical image within rectangular borders.

The widely-recommended plug-in for correcting (and, I suppose introducing) wide angle distortions is Panotools - http://home.no.net/dmaurer/~dersch/Index.htm . Apparently, it is comprehensive but not especially intuitive.

We'd like to here back on the results of your "experiments." :)

[msol]

Hi Maderito,

Thanks for your comments. I didn't try the Panotools yet.
Here is some result created in "pure"Photoshop as follows:
1) I increased the canvas size of the original
2) Then I selected an ellipse area covering precisely the photo, so going through the four corners. Note that here is some freedom, you can make many ellipse shapes through the four corners! What would be the best choice?
3) Then I spherized (100%) the selection.

I also tried cropping that result to rectangular shape, but then I lost so much of the image that the entire effect disappeared.

So, what do you think? Does this somehow resemble a wide-angle lens shot?

Original photo:
http://community.webshots.com/s/image9/4/7/49/114540749wSEXYO_ph.jpg

After the distortion:
http://community.webshots.com/s/image9/4/8/79/114540879FukQEr_ph.jpg

Kind regards,
Marc

[maderito]

So, what do you think? Does this somehow resemble a wide-angle lens shot?
Sorry...can't access your images which apparently require appropriate permissions on the "community.webshots.com" server.

[msol]

Hmmm. :( Bye bye to Webshots. I've now created a fotopic site. Hope this works better.

So... does it somehow look like taken with a wide-angle lens?

Here's the original
http://images.fotopic.net/?id=2586505&outx=600&oq=0

And here's the "wide-angle trial".
http://images.fotopic.net/?id=2586504&outx=600&oq=0

[maderito]

Sounds like you are really commited to finding a solution!

I think you got the effect your were looking for - a wide angle shot with significant barrel distortion. I don't think you can get the "real" effect without resorting to the Panorama tool transformations (mentioned in my first post) which can create the distortions within the rectilinear format of the original image.

See http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/perspective/Wide_Angle_Perspective.html for an interesting perspective!

Thanks for the contribution.

[krissa]

Hi there,

I too, wanted to find a solution in Photoshop that would work to create wide angle images. Here's what I've come up with:

1. Take several pictures of the main image & surrounding area that would normally be captured by a wide angle lens.

2. Open Photoshop / File / Automate / Photomerge.

3. You will be prompted to choose the photos you want to stitch together.

It takes a little time & effort, but once the image is stitched together, you can crop the border to clean it up - and use the warp tool to perfect the image.

Hope this helps!!