June 21
Andromeda LensDoc Coming This Week
Demo of Photoshop plugin available now

by David Nagel
Executive Producer

Andromeda Software will ship a new Photoshop filter June 23 called LensDoc. In the meantime, the company has made a demo version of the software available via its Web site. The filter is designed to correct distortions, such as barreling and pincushioning image distortions, produced by zoom and wide-angle lenses. It also provides correction for perspective and rotation.

The filter works when through a system of points. The user identifies two lines in the image that should be straight and applies two sets of three points to the lines. The filter then provides a preview of the correction, allowing for changes before the final application.

In addition, LensDoc includes settings for specific lenses for lens correction and provides extra distortion effects for emulating certain lenses. Each lens setting has subsettings for focal length and focus distance, as well as less/more correction settings and center settings.

Generic settings include barreling, extreme barreling, generic pincushioning and no correction. The filter also includes an expert mode. It allows users to save lenses, get more lenses, switch from picture preview to a series of curve graphs and toggle auto size mode. Toggling auto size allows users to define which areas of the image will be scaled and which pixels will be lost in resizing the image.

Orders are currently being accepted for LensDoc with a preorder price of $69. After release, the price will go up to $89. We'll bring you more when the full version is released. For more information, visit http://www.andromeda.com.