Why walls lean
When a camera tilts up to fit a building or a tall room, parallel vertical lines converge toward the top of the frame. A shift lens avoids this in camera. Without one, the fix happens in editing: a perspective transform pulls the top of the frame outward until the verticals are parallel again.
Doing it without side effects
A heavy correction stretches the top of the image, so a building can look too tall or a ceiling too high. We correct verticals, then check proportions against something known, such as a door or a window, and adjust the vertical scale if needed. We also watch the crop: correction eats into the edges, so we tell you when a frame needs more room than it has.
| Problem | What we do |
|---|---|
| Leaning verticals | Perspective correction, then a proportion check |
| Barrel or pincushion distortion | Lens profile correction, then a manual check on straight lines |
| Tilted horizon | Rotation to level, before perspective work |
| Two-point perspective out of balance | Horizontal correction only where it looks natural |
Shooting tips that help
Leave extra space around the subject, especially at the top, so there is room to correct. Keep the camera level where you can. If you shoot with a shift lens, tell us, and we'll leave the geometry alone.
Questions
Do you correct every frame the same way?
No. Each frame gets its own correction, but the rules, such as how much vertical scale to restore, stay the same across the set.
Can you correct a very wide interior?
Usually. Very wide lenses stretch the corners, so we soften the correction in the corners where a full fix would look wrong.
Back from a shoot with a full card? Send a few frames and tell us the look. We edit a test, then the set.
Request a quote