Converging verticals problem is common when you are taking photos of buildings, especially with wide angle lens. This happens when you point the camera upwards to include the top of the building.

Some likes this distorting effect to create striking building images. To get this effect, all you need to do is to get closer to the building and point your camera upwards to make an extreme viewpoint.

For those who don’t like this effect, there are ways to correct the distortion. In this tutorial, I’m going to fix it by using Adobe Photoshop.

You can use the transform tool to correct it. Press Ctrl + ‘ to turn on the gridlines. This will help when you’re transforming the photo. Press Ctrl + T to transform the image.

Next, you’ll need to press Ctrl + Shift and click on the point at the bottom right. Move the point inwards, until the building is in a straight line as the gridlines. Repeat the same to the point at the bottom left. Press Enter to confirm your changes.

You may then crop out the photo by pressing C and select the area. Shown below is the comparison of before and after transformation.

There are some other ways apart from transforming your photo in Photoshop. You can buy shift or perspective control lenses. These specialized lenses uses a mechanism to move the position of the lens independent of the camera. It allows you to keep the camera vertical but stil include much more of the top of the building. Bear in mind that these things don’t come cheap.

Other than that, you can also try to take the building from further away. By moving further away, you also have more obstacles in front of you and you’ll tend to include more unwanted items in your foreground. Hence, a better and cheaper solution would still be using Photoshop to transform your image.