PTLens is now advertising itself as an external editor for Lightroom. While not in the same form a plugin would take, it’s still quite similar to some Aperture plugins, i.e. convert the file and process it then.
For those not familiar with PTLens, it provides lens distortion corrections not currently available in Lightroom. To be precise it fixes pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective distortion. The corrections are automatic based on a database of lenses.
There is a trial version available, which can be converted to a full version for a paltry $15. Note that the external editor requires V2 of Lightroom.
ptlens is a marvel.
i used it for two years now.
it’s cheap and it’s automatic. it’s great productivity. you cannot work without this plugin if you are in architecture. but also for general photography: some zoom lenses have enourmous curvature in their centers. This one corrects it all! lr3 and ps5 are simply not good enough for lens corrections
so have a go and download the trial to see the difference(s)!
You leave out the one main issue. You have to render the file. Have you actually used LR3 corrections? They’re quite good. And I say that as a PT Lens owner.
Price is up to $25. Still a good addition to Lightroom.
John, you know as well as I do the current state of the SDK and what it allows for. An application that performs a function that Lightroom doesn’t, albeit through a rendered file, is still better than nothing. Photoshop doesn’t perform the correction based on lens data, which makes this a useful addition.
Word or Excel doesn’t deal with images files as a main format, while you can import them the ultimate output is a Word or Excel file.
It’s no more a plugin than the Dodge and Burn sample plugin that came with Aperture, but it does use the only current way possible to hook into Lightroom, as an External Editor. If you’ve looked at it, you’d see that it’s dropped off all the excess to keep it as small as possible to work in only this function (i.e as PTLens Edit, rather than the full app).
thanks for the great find. after trying it on one image i was sold. just bought a license. i also own dxo but the dng files it was producing would have issues with color. go figure. thanks sean
By that count even a program that couldn’t render a tif – Word or Excel, for instance – could call itself a plug in since LR would create and catalogue the tif. False or hyped claims deserve a dose of ridicule.
At least the processed file is stored in the library automatically.
Strap on might be more about gender swapping than added functionality..
They all want to be Lightroom’s best friend, don’t they?
Being “integrated” or “a plug-in” has to mean a little more than editing a rendered tif. Until their claims amount to more, maybe we should call such applications “strap ons”?