Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s Transform Panel is the place to go when you need to fix geometric flaws in your images. Problems like a slanted horizon line, or buildings that appear to be falling over, are the kind of common mistakes that we can repair using the simple tools that live inside of this section of Lightroom Classic’s Develop Module.
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There are two things to keep in mind when you are using the Transform Tools in Lightroom Classic:
First, you should always apply the appropriate Lens Correction Profile to your image before you use any of the Transform Tools if you can. The tools inside of Lightroom Classic’s Transform Panel are no substitute for the pincushion / barrel distortion repair that the Lens Correction Panel provides. Often, it takes the combination of work in these two panels to make the objects in your image look truly nice and straight.
Second, using any of the tools inside of the Transform Panel will force you to Crop part of your image away. Unfortunately, geometric repairs like these are not free. The more that you have to straighten out your image using the Transform Panel then the more of your original capture that you will have to crop away in the end to force your finished product back into a rectangular shape.
Moral: Lightroom Classic’s Transform Tools are a great help when we have made mistakes out in the field but we want to use this feature as rarely, and as sparingly, as possible. It’s always best to get things right in-camera so that you do not need to crop any of your precious pixels away when you get home.
