14 DAY TRIAL // If you work a lot with digital photos you probably have some method of removing lens distortion. Most high-end image editing applications have built in filters for this sort of thing, so you don't necessarily need a specialized tool, but those offer several advantages. While removing lens distortion in something like Photoshop is an easy task, it does entail a certain amount of microing, especially if you have multiple images. After all, having to adjust the settings for every image can quickly become a pain and this is necessary if you have lots of images and you also work with multiple lenses. To speed things up, you're better off with a specialized program, such as LensFix CI.
What it does LensFix CI builds on the LensFix plug-in for Photoshop. It does the same thing, but is a standalone program and is much better suited to the task, providing very fast distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting corrections as well as allowing the user to adjust the perspective of the image. It leverages the power of your video card where possible to keep the strain off your main processor, but will use both if necessary.
Working with it The best thing about LensFix CI is how it does most of the job by itself. It comes with the PTLens database that includes correction settings for over 500 lenses and cameras. Regardless of what camera and lens setup you might have, chances are good that LensFix CI will know about it. It even knows about my ancient crappy camera.
When you load an image, the program will automatically process the EXIF information and search the database for the best lens settings. Should it not find exactly what you want, you can still do things manually, but most of the time, the right settings are automatically loaded the second the image is opened, as long as the EXIF information is present.
Beside lens correction, LensFix CI also has some other correction tools. You can fix any chromatic aberrations on the fly by using the sliders and the preview shows exactly what the result will look like. Zoom into a sharp edge or near one of the corners, scrub the slider and that's it. It will also correct vignetting, or radial luminance, if it is wanted. The sliders give you a fine control, but you can also enter values manually. Last but not least it can be used to quickly touch up the perspective of the image. The option to auto scale the image will make sure that the photo will stay within the original dimensions.
Should you mainly use some other programs such as Aperture or Lightroom for working with images, LensFix CI can be safely used as an external editor for these. Photos will not be harmed in any way as the program is smart enough to maintain the color profile in the output file. The only exception is Adobe's new ProPhoto RGB option that is not supported in the export.
Batch The good thing about the extensive library that comes with LensFix CI is that it can do most of the job by itself and that is ideal when you combine it with batch processing. LensFix CI lets you do batch jobs using automatic, current or preset settings. While both the current and the preset options are no-brainers, the automatic one is what you really want when you have a ton of photos taken with various lenses and even cameras. The batch lets you specify as many folders and individual files as you like and it even has a little checkbox next to each that lets you specify whether you want the program to go into subfolders as well. This is very nice as you can set up monster batches to correct thousands of photos with minimal effort. Last but not least, the batch has a rather intelligent naming system that lets you customize the name of the output files and it can even put your computer to sleep when done.
The Good Builds on the LensFix plug-in for Photoshop, but is a stand-alone application. It has an extensive database of cameras and lenses. Very easy to use and very fast.
The Bad Many high-end image editing applications offer the same results, despite needing a bit more microing.
The Truth If you don't do this sort of thing often and already have an application like Photoshop that you can use, then don't bother. However, if you need to do a lot of lens corrections and don't have a dedicated tool for it, you can't really go wrong with LensFix CI.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
