Lightroom 5 – Built In GoPro Lens Correction

Just a quick tip for GoPro Hero 3 users, if you’ve also got a copy of Adobe Lightroom 5, you can now use the Lens Corrections panel to correct the distortion from the fisheye lens, it doesn’t cover the GoPro Hero 3 + Black edition yet, but it’s got the original Hero 3 white, silver and black editions built in so you can get more normal looking photo’s without messing around in Photoshop.

Here’s what the menu looks like:

Lightroom 5 Lens Corrections Panel with GoPro selected under manufacturer
Lightroom 5 Lens Corrections Panel with GoPro selected under manufacturer

Interestingly for this photo the Hero 3 silver option seemed to give me the best (least distorted) results.

Here’s the shot before and after editing:

Unedited GoPro shot from the GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition

See the edited version below, it’s far from perfect but for a quick edit so I can get some photo’s up on Facebook it does the job, and if the horizon had been somewhere near straight and near the centre of the frame I’m sure it would have been much more effective.

GoPro Shot edited in Lightroom 5 using the built in GoPro lens correction

It was a beautiful morning with a few glassy waves around, I switched it briefly into still mode to capture the colour in the clouds, this was at 07:20 so it was still pretty dark, about an hour before the sun fully came up over the headland, although I expect I would have got some really nice photo’s with my DSLR in a housing I wouldn’t have been able to stow it safely in my wetsuit (it tucks inside the chest-zip flap of my 4mm Xcel Infiniti nicely) when I wanted to shoot video whilst surfing the waves.

Frame grab from the GoPro Hero 3+

So there’s another great reason for aspiring surf photographers to start using Adobe Lightroom if you don’t already, it will revolutionise how you edit photo’s.

Comments

2 responses to “Lightroom 5 – Built In GoPro Lens Correction”

  1. Anton P Avatar
    Anton P

    Thanks for the LR tip Ben!
    Keep on blogging, some very interesting post you’re writing lately.

    1. ben Avatar
      ben

      Thanks Anton, I’ll be trying to keep up with the regular posts.

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