Using Corel Paint Shop Pro to correct perspectives

When taking a picture of something such as a building, one usually takes it for granted that it will be straight, and that the surrounding buildings will also be vertical. However, due to factors such as perspective it can easily make your image look unnatural and angular, when all you wanted was a straight-forward picture of a City Hall. Luckily Corel Paint Shop Pro comes equipped with a tool for dealing with this exact issue, strangely enough it is called the Perspective Correction Tool and it is not only easy to use, but very effective.

Step 1. As you can see in the original screenshot, above, the bell tower of the City Hall appears to be leaning to the right, as does the shop on the left, while the building on the right seems reasonably straight, with only a slight lean to the left. What we want to do is make the verticals nice and straight in the image, so our first step as usual is to duplicate the background layer by right-clicking and selecting Duplicate, and then rename it.

Step 2. Select the Perspective Correction Tool, which is grouped with the Straighten Tool in your toolbar, the icon for this tool looks like a rectangle leading away from us with tags on each corner. When you select this a tool looking pretty much like its icon should appear, drag the corners of the rectangle so that they fit the shape of the image; so the vertical lines are in line with what you want to be the verticals, and similarly with the horizontals.

Step 3. Check the options for the tool; the Crop option should be selected, otherwise you'll get a very strange result, and press the green arrow to apply the effect. You should now have your image about right, it can take a few attempts to get the right result, so don't give up if you get an abomination the first time. Remember, we have the original layer still if everything goes horribly wrong. Speaking of the original layer; parts of this will now be showing at the sides most likely, so we need to fix that in a moment.

Step 4. All we have to do here is use the crop tool; by this point you should be happy with your image and no longer need the original layer as back-up, so select the Crop tool and move the tags to the corners of the new layer; this may be easier if you conceal the original layer at this point by pressing the eye next to its thumbnail. Once your rectangle is in place, double-click to apply the crop and you're done.

That's how you correct perspectives in Corel Paint Shop Pro.