Barrel Distortion

Interior photographers need to be on the look out for barrel distortion. Barrel distortion is a feature of wide-angle lenses that causes straight lines to look outwardly curved like the shape of a barrel. The curving happens more toward the outer edge of the image. Barrel distortion is worse in inexpensive lenses but even expensive zoom lenses have barrel distortion. Only high quality fixed focal length lenses are free of barrel distortion.

Sometimes the barrel distortion can just be cropped out when it’s near the edge of the image. A great way to get rid of barrel distortion completely is a plug-in for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements called PTlens by Thomas Niemann. Check it out at www.epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html it’s a great little tool.