Best "Rotate" and "Perspective control" plugin for PS CS3

<p>Hello.<br>

To some of you this may sound like a pretty silly question. Let me explain myself.<br>

Occasionally I need to rotate my images just a fraction of a degree. For that I either use the tool available in Lightroom 2 but more often than not the image that needs rotation is already in Photoshop and there I use the "Arbitrary" rotation tool. The process of rotating an image goes very quickly... too quickly if you ask me. I can't help but think that Adobe simply incorporated an unsophisticated and straightforward algorithm in that tool. This means that there are probably plugins out there that can do better job at rotating digital images. Such plugin would probably offer an option of correcting perspective distortions as well and I'm interested in that too.<br>

There are several approaches and many algorithms to deal with this kind of thing. I would like to use one that gives THE BEST results even if it would mean waiting a few minutes each time. I need a plugin that works with PS CS3 and if it isn't free it must offer a trial period.<br>

I hope someone gets what I'm talking about.<br>

Please post some links where I can find what I'm looking for.<br>

Thanks!</p>

<p>Yuri, it's not a silly question, but I do think you're underrating the Rotate Canvas and distortion correction tools in CS3. I've used them both with excellent results. The test is whether or not you see any distortion, anomalies or artifacts in the image after the operation that weren't there before. If not, the CS3 tools are doing what they're supposed to do. As they say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.</p>

<p>I'm sure you'll get some different responses shortly... ;-)</p>

<p>I would like to add a few things.<br /> I know for sure that there are algorithms that remap the original image to a greater scale and do the calculations necessary to rotate that image at that higher resolution thus obtaining greater precision. Doing that would also (supposedly) introduce less artifacts and retain more of the original detail than using the conventional "Rotatate Canvas" approach. We all know that Photoshop doesn't go through all of the aformentioned trouble, otherwise we would "feel" that as such a technique naturally requires more memory and more processing time. You could argue that achieving a similar result would be possible without any plugins by simply upscaling the photo, applying all the adjustments at that resolution and then resizing to the original dimensions. But come on.... Do I really need to argue that digitally enlarging and then reducing an image introduces artifacts of its own? So no.... that kind of technique would work for me only as the last resort. I need a plugin because I simply want to achieve the best results possible...<br /> Another thing that would be useful to me is if the same plugin would offer corrections for barrel and pincushion distortions. To my understanding, the best possible quality would be obtained if "rotation", "perspective correction" and "lens distortion corrections" were applied in a single run as opposed to: first correcting the optical distortions, then rotating the image to only later start playing with the perspective.<br /> So please add this to the list. A plugin that also corrects optical distortions using "rocket science" formulas to obtains the greatest precision and to introduce artifacts that are close to zero.<br /> There's just gotta be something like that available out there. The year is 2010.</p>

<p>try this...<br>

in CS3, duplicate the background, you will have new layer. Select it.<br>

- Command + T (Edit + Free transform)<br>

- on the Tool Bar on the Top of the Screen (or got to Windows, select Options, top tool bar will appear)<br>

- there is 7 small windows on the top tool bat giving dimension etc etc. Select the #5 (angle) enter a number in there. Positive # is clockwise, negative # is counter clockwise, for ex. 1.0 is one degree, 0.1 is one then of degree. (or -1.0 and -0.1)</p>

<p>In CS3 convert to smart object and select free transform, this is a nondestructive edit, it doesn't really get much better than that.</p>

<p>I'm not a PTGui user, but you may want to check it out. Of the many "fixes" submitted to the following thread, PTGui's is the only one that preserves almost all the original's content, i.e. resulting in the least amount of cropping. Minimizing cropping can be critical for some images.<br>

http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00WeiM</p>