PTLens
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PTLens |
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PTLens is software that corrects lens pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective. Currently PTLens is available as both a standalone application and Photoshop plug-in for Microsoft Windows, and as a standalone application for the Mac (plug-in is under development). View examples of PTLens at work, or download the software for a free 10 image trial. Click on the picture for more images of Antarctica.
PTLens runs under Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista with a monitor resolution of at least 1024x768 (DPI 96). You may run PTLens on Unix under a Windows simulator. If you have difficulty reading PTLens help (Help > PTLens Help) on Unix then install a standalone chm viewer such as kchmviewer. The Help.chm file may be found in the installation directory.
The plug-in version works with Photoshop version 6 and above, all versions of Photoshop Elements, and the German FixFoto. Although PTLens is compatible with Photoshop 5, Paint Shop Pro, and Irfanview camera make, model, lens, and focal length must be manually specified as these applications do not supply EXIF information to plug-ins.
PTLens runs on Intel Mac computers under Mac OS 10.5.2 (Leopard) or later with a monitor resolution of at least 1280x800. Currently only the standalone version is available. The plug-in version is under development.
PTLens is the first application to automate distortion correction. It all started on August 20, 2002, when I posted the following message in a news group:
What I need is a batch program that reads EXIF information from a JPEG file, looks up the closest match in a table, and automatically corrects for distortion. Well, I can dream, can't I?
Nobody volunteered so on September 19, 2002, I released version 1.0 of PTLens. Several years and 30,000 lines of source code later PTLens has evolved from a simple DOS command-line program to an easy-to-use Windows application and Photoshop plug-in that corrects distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective. The "table", referred to in the above quote, consists of more than 2400 separate calibrations — far more than any other application. Site DpReview has compared PTLens with DxO and Photoshop CS2 (I've since improved vignetting). See reviews for PTLens at Digital Outback Photo, About.com, and articles in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Japanese, and Czech.
Tom Niemann
Portland, Oregon
epaperpress.com
