How to adjust perspectives/distortion of a distorted object within a photo?

[DonKC]

Someone in my family had pasted vintage photos in a scrapbook without my access to a flatbed scanner (to scan an entire page) or being able to remove the photo (to scan individually), so I took a photo with my iPhone (trying to be as perpendicular, straight and true as I could). I can edit on the phone with Apple's crop and perspective tools to isolate photos in the photo rather easily with repeated tweaking, and most pics turned out fine.

However some photos were sloppy and taken sideways, and from different perspectives, and I wanted to try using Affinity Photo v2 thinking there would have to be tools to do that quickly. So I made a test photo to use but I have struggled for hours with what seems to be missing tools to correct these distorted photos trying to use Filters->Distort -Perspective, Mesh, Deform, etc. What I would like is movable points at each corner of the object photo within and simply move them to corners of guides I set up for resolution and size but that is frustrated at every turn.

I have attached a deliberately skewed and distorted photo of a square grid in a 3.5"x3.5" vintage photo-like size that I tried to create a 3.5"x3.5" photo at 300 pixels/inch.

Is there an easy way to do this in Affinity that I am missing?

 

[R C-R]

Have you tried using the Perspective Tool for this?

[Old Bruce]

I would open the picture in Affinity Photo and rotate the "Background" layer to be as close to square as possible and then tweak with the Perspective Tool if necessary. Could be a lot of work, no easy way to do this well.

[Lisbon]

54 minutes ago, DonKC said:

...but I have struggled for hours with what seems to be missing tools to correct these distorted photos trying to use Filters->Distort -Perspective, Mesh, Deform, etc.

Try Live Projection.

A.Photo v1 workflow:
1) Layer > Live Projection > Perspective Projection
2) Adjust the perspective grid

3) Select the Move Tool (V) and Export.

Ctrl + Mouse Wheel = Zoom
Space bar = Move canvas

[DonKC]

22 minutes ago, Lisbon said:

Try Live Projection.

VERY COOL! Had no idea that was there (or why LOL). Worked for me, and tested it over the original and it was pretty close (I wasn't real precise about points).