ShiftN 4.0.0.1

Landscape/architectural photographs taken by ordinary "point and shoot" cameras OR by cameras with changeable (but ordinary) lenses are prone to being distorted and may detract from the subject on account of the problem known as 'converging lines' in photography. Converging lines in photographs, particularly of buildings, forests and so on, will often detract from the desired effect. Converging lines are caused by the film-plane being angled relative to the object of the photo, and that effect can be avoided optically by the use of either a shift lens (quite expensive) or the use of a medium or large-format view camera having swing features. ShiftN is a tool that does this correction digitally, without the need to purchase/acquire expensive shift lenses.

ShiftN permits correction of converging lines; a majority of the correction work is taken over automatically by the program. Using the "automatic correction" item in the menu is in most cases sufficient to produce a satisfying result. Both the effects of converging lines and poor camera angle are corrected automatically.

The process in ShiftN is to search the image first for straight lines and edges, and to consider those which are sufficiently vertical to be likely architectural elements. On the basis of these straight line segments the program runs an optimization process that attempts to determine perspective, correcting the image so the lines are made parallel to each other.

ShiftN is freeware. The installer downloaded from this page is suitable for all 32&64 bit versions of Windows.