# Drawing - or painting - buildings from photographs.



## Rigby (Mar 18, 2021)

I use photos that are not restricted from use by others due to copyright.

Whereas many are very good, there are lots of photos of buildings which have distorted perspective.

It is difficult to keep a camera straight and level without a tripod.

At first I would tend to reproduce them as I saw them in the photo, avoiding pictures with too much distortion of either vertical, horizontal or both. Sometimes I would try to correct them if the distortions stood out very badly. But I found it to be a tricky business.

Then I learned that photoshop has an app that will correct perspective. But that is the only app I would require from Adobe; it would be a real waste of money for me to buy it, since 99% of what photoshop provides would be of no use to me. I am a low tech type and would rather spend my pennies on art materials.

Apparently there are other cheaper alternatives to photoshop, and even some apps that can be downloaded free. Could anyone advise me if one of them might help me. There are two desk top computers in our house: a standard widows PC and an Apple. They are getting on a bit now.

Am I worrying too much about correcting perspective? After all I like to draw buildings, but I don't do what might be called architectural drawings. Sometimes distorted perspective can be useful - cliffs or buildings drawn from the perspective of somebody looking up can be very dramatic.

But I am not really an artist. I am a draughtsman and I copy things.

I would be grateful if other members could comment and specifically about how they deal with distorted perspective in photos they want to copy.


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