Overview of distortion tools

Photoshop includes tools for both correction and creative transformation. These tools help fix lens-related issues such as barrel distortion or vignetting and let you warp or reshape content for artistic effects.

Types of distortion tools in Photoshop

Distortion tools can be categorized into two main groups:

Correction-focused distortion tools

• Lens Correction: Fix barrel distortion, pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting.
• Perspective Warp: Adjust perspective in photos of buildings, architecture, or objects.
• Adaptive Wide Angle: Correct distortions in panoramic or wide-angle photos.

Creative distortion tools

• Liquify: Reshape specific areas of your image with brush-based tools. Push, pull, twirl, bloat, or pucker parts of your image for creative effects. Use Face-Aware Liquify to easily adjust facial features with intuitive sliders.
• Warp: Bend and stretch your image using a flexible grid. Adjust control points to create custom distortions and transformations.
• Puppet Warp: Reposition specific parts of your image while keeping others in place. Place a mesh over your image and move points to create natural-looking deformations.
• Distort and Skew: Transform specific areas of your image with precision. Stretch or slant parts of your content to adjust perspective or create custom visual effects.

Lens distortion types

• Barrel Distortion: Straighten lines that curve outward from the center. Correct the fish-eye effect often seen in wide-angle shots.
• Pincushion Distortion: Adjust lines that bend inward toward the image center. Fix the pinched look used in telephoto images.
• Chromatic Aberration: Remove unwanted color fringes along high-contrast edges. Aligning color channels accurately enhances image clarity.
• Vignetting: Balance brightness across your entire image. Lighten dark corners to create a more even exposure throughout your photo.