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.

Are you considering what size your image needs to be when you put it up on the web? In this example, I’m using an image with the width of 600 pixels. I opened the image using Photoshop, and changed the image to 600 pixels in width. Then set the resolution to 72 pixels. That is the standard setting for screen display.

To save your image for websites, select File > Save for Web. I’m assuming that most people will have broadband speeds of at least 512 Kbps and we will base our image optimization on this speed. In the Save for Web dialog box, click on the Preview Menu button (small round button with a triangle pointing right) and select Size/Download Time 512 Kbps.

This is important for evaluating our download speeds later. During the Save for Web process it is essential that you compare the visual appearance of the optimized image against the original. To achieve this, simply select the 2-Up tab (top left corner) and you will see a before and after version of the image, side by side.

The compression mode that I use for a JPEG image is usually at High / Quality - 60. You can always change the Quality value to your liking. Some might compress it even more while others will preserve the image quality.

In photoshop, anyone who’s scaled an image down, changed their mind and then tried to stretch the image to its original size will know of the pixellated mess that occurs.

This can now be avoided with the Smart Objects feature. It allows you to scale the image like a vector object. You can reduce and enlarge a photo without loosing the image quality. This feature is only available in photoshop CS2 and above. By using the Smart Object feature, the original image is embedded in the layer so any resizing that occurs calls on the original hi-res version.

1. To add a smart object, all you need to do is go to File > Place.

2. Choose your picture and click place. Your image will open with a bounding box around it. Use this to scale the image. Hold down Shift key and drag the corner point. After that press Enter to confirm your selection.

3. This is your Smart Object layer. Your Smart Object should have a little page icon in the bottom right corner of the layer’s thumbnail.

Now, enlarging and shrinking the object is no longer a problem with Smart Object in Adobe Photoshop.