Purists be warned there is not a lot of Sigma in this post, if that offends look away now.
In this thread last week I posted
End terrace because I had discovered new (to me at least) geometry fixing capability in Adobe Camera Raw, a one-button click to fix horizontal and vertical distortion.
#1, jpeg from unadjusted X3F
I went through my archive looking for other images with leaning or pregnant buildings. I found 4, three were much improved by the new button but one resisted.
The image above produced a large white rectangle in the bottom left corner when the button was clicked. It is blank canvas. To explain in the PS environment the image sits on top of an invisible canvas that is the same size. If the picture is distorted away from it's original onscreen size in editing the canvas appears, transparent pixels because no data are associated. It was very, very difficult to clone into those pixels because it meant creating a window (in the pink building) with no perspective model as base to work from.
#2. Edited in 2012 with PSE 3
#2 was the edit I was trying to improve on. It is from my blistering eyeballs era.
#3. Edited this week.
I opted for
Free Transform manually. This left a small pixel triangle bottom left easily cloned into and a long, narrow triangle top right also easily cloned into. Next problem, to use a Scott Kelby phrase, the building was too squatty. Because PS has the idea of
canvas there is a tool to increase canvas size, i.e. creating editable space outside the boundary of the original. Then apply
Free Transform and while holding down the Shift key click on the top centre handle and pull up, the horizontal dimension stays constant and the squattiness goes away. In this instance it is done to taste, I do not have an undistorted original to make precise measurements. I had to stand about 15m (yards) from the building to take the photo. Tourists galore and a traffic light pole just to my left, cramped.
The lens is the old 10-20mm, there is a new model. The old model was notorious for having a
soft (fuzzy) top left corner at the 10mm end. Now a challenge, I have included the original (#1) so members can download and attempt a squaring up and further editing to improve on my #3. Interesting will be those who have third-party sharpening programs, e.g. Topaz. Please post here for comparisons. I award a prize of a gin and tonic, to myself, to anyone doing better. Cheers!
Some connected info. The building was
The Indian Institute (hence the elephant weathervane) in Oxford built in the late 19th century for the purpose, at the time of the Raj, of training students to work in the Indian civil service and provide an insight for Brits into Indian people and culture. In 1968 a change of use and it became the
Modern History Faculty concentrated on recent European history with India ignored. It changed again to become
The Oxford Martin School, a facility for some 200 academics to brainstorm innovative solutions to problems (climate change, power generation etc etc) on an interdisciplinary basis.
Controversy with India continues today. Some Indians are asking for the return of the
Koh-i-Noor diamond, currently it is part of the crown worn by the appropriate woman at a Coronation. To avoid sensibility issues at the Coronation of King Charles III in May Queen-Consort Camilla will wear a different crown. In my life if I have a pair of trousers in the laundry I have to find the other pair, for a Coronation some families have a surfeit of crowns.
