The Nikon CoolPix is a great camera and by using the accessory lenses by Nikon you can get great wide-angle shots. The big problem is with the barrel distortion caused when shooting with the wide angle adaptor (as seen at the right). This tutorial will show you how to get rid of that barrel distortion.

Step 1

Download and install Panorama Tools. (free software)

You will be using is the ptools plug-in filter while in Photoshop to fix your images. Follow the instructions for installing PanoTools.

For Mac users this is very easy, just drag-n-drop pano12.lib onto your System Folder, then drag-n-drop the PTools plugin into your Photoshop plugins folder. Windows users should follow the instructions that come with Panorama Tools. You should restart your computer after installing the files.

Step 2

• Open your wide-angle image in Photoshop
• Go to your Filter Menu
• Go to Panorama Tools and choose Correct
• Click on Options and use the settings as shown at right
• Press OK to run the filter

Step 3

Your corrected image should adjust as shown below with black areas pincusioned into the image top and bottom. Just crop out that black area and you will have your corrected image ready to go. It's very easy to do and is harder to explain than practice. If you have heavily barrel distorted images from a full frame fisheye shot you can correct that too if you run the filter a number of times but you will distort the edges of the image and fuzz it a bit.

It's hard to believe but the before and after images overlaid upon each other in the animation below really demonstrates the significant correction done by PanoTools.

before and after corrected image animation

News Flash
I just found another Photoshop Plugin to get rid of barrel distortion, it's called DeBarrelizer and you can get it here. This plugin is very easy to use and even gives you a preview. PanoTools is still great since it can batch an entire folder of images and can be used for other effects too.