Recommended tools for perspective correction in Affinity Photo

[creature]

I often want to square up my photos when editing, but struggle to get a natural-looking result with the perspective tool in Affinity. I often end up with square-but-noticeably-distorted pictures. The horizontal/vertical/rotation perspective adjustments in the develop persona sometimes help, but it can take a while to figure out the correct settings combo to straighten and level an image. 

About the only thing I miss about Lightroom is the guided upright feature – you draw vertical/horizontal lines on your image, and Lightroom figures out the necessary transform. It does a much better job than I do!

Can anyone recommend a plugin or tool that works well with Affinity Photo and provides the "guided upright" feature? The Nik Collection has a perspective correction plugin, but notes that "Nik Perspective is not compatible with Serif Affinity Photo, as it doesn’t allow plugins to perform geometric transformations."

I'm using Affinity Photo (v1) on macOS.

[GarryP]

Without being able to see the problem(s) we can only guess at what the solution(s) may be.
If you give us one or more example images we can suggest some things to try.

[v_kyr]

APh v1 itself offers these here therefor ...

• Sizing, cropping and warping
  • Cropping and straightening ***
  • Mesh warping ***
  • Perspective ***

[NotMyFault]

7 hours ago, creature said:

I often want to square up my photos when editing, but struggle to get a natural-looking result with the perspective tool in Affinity. I often end up with square-but-noticeably-distorted pictures. The horizontal/vertical/rotation perspective adjustments in the develop persona sometimes help, but it can take a while to figure out the correct settings combo to straighten and level an image. 

About the only thing I miss about Lightroom is the guided upright feature – you draw vertical/horizontal lines on your image, and Lightroom figures out the necessary transform. It does a much better job than I do!

Can anyone recommend a plugin or tool that works well with Affinity Photo and provides the "guided upright" feature? The Nik Collection has a perspective correction plugin, but notes that "Nik Perspective is not compatible with Serif Affinity Photo, as it doesn’t allow plugins to perform geometric transformations."

I'm using Affinity Photo (v1) on macOS.

I fully share your frustration.

The perspective tool is good to distort a perfect rectangle, but almost useless to correct a distorted rectangle back to orthogonality.

I made a feature request some time ago, which explains what we are looking for:

 

[NotMyFault]

Another user recommended Nik Perspective fx. I never tried.

[NotMyFault]

Here my workflow to straighten skewed rectangular objects:

1. create a rectangular shape showing the target shape as helper
2. create a curve of 4 nodes matching the skewed source corners
3. add perspective filter. 
4. set to source mode
5. match the nodes to curve helper layer (snapping does not work)
6. set mode to destination 
7. match nodes to rectangle (snapping to other nodes of perspective filter x/y positions is available)

This is faster and more reliable that trying to directly match nodes to the source image, or using destination mode.

The main issue with perspective is that the nodes interact with each other. You can’t find a final position of one node, the next, as every node can interact with already positioned nodes. This makes it useless in many cases.

Second issue is missing snapping to grid / layer geometry.

[creature]

14 hours ago, GarryP said:

If you give us one or more example images we can suggest some things to try.

Sure, here's a handful of examples. These are all almost, but not quite square. 

 

7 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

I fully share your frustration. The perspective tool is good to distort a perfect rectangle, but almost useless to correct a distorted rectangle back to orthogonality.

I often find myself wishing for a "mirror mode" – if I drag, say, the bottom right node down, I want the bottom left node to move up an equal distance. But really that's just a stopgap – letting the software figure it out is my ideal mode. 

Thanks for the tip about drawing a guiding rectangle, and then distorting it to match the skewed rectangle – I hadn't thought of that, and I can definitely imagine it being useful! 

[Max P]

Hi,  

 

 For this, I  use  DxO viewPoint , You can try 30 days 

[firstdefence]

All Perspective "correction" apps will distort, it's what distortion is tolerable to you. So you straighten the verticals and everything else in the image is distorted for the sake of spirit-level verticals.

To get an idea of the distortion, have a layer without distortion and one above with distortion and reduce the opacity of the one above to see the disparity. DXO Viewpoint still distorts

Take a look at the attached file, the top layer can be made to fit the full dimensions of the original image but I imported it as-is, you can adjust it to fit the full frame. This file is just to give an idea of how VP gives you more options to "correct" but it's not a cure-all.

With and without.afphoto

[henryanthony]

I have a need to alter perspective by very small increments due to a technical requirement of a project I am working on. I am looking for an application that has the capability to move transformation nodes numerically or nudging by individual pixel using keyboard input. I am willing to purchase an application to do this and was hoping someone on the forum could recommend something. I would like to avoid installing numerous 30 day trials to find what I need if it even exists.

And, I plead guilty for hijacking this thread. 

Thanks!

Edited June 22, 2023 by henryanthony