This is not going to be a post about why every Photographer should be always shooting in RAW mode, but to talk about a specific tool inside Lightroom instead: the Transform tool - which in my opinion, is one of the most powerful ones.
As an Architecture enthusiastic, I'm a huge fan of ultra-wide lenses, giving me the opportunity to fit much more of the subject in the frame without having to move that farther out. But one of the disadvantages of using a wide-lens is that, the closer you get to your subject, the more distorted it will look in the frame, especially on the perimeters. Unless you are using a tilt-shift lens (like a 24mm or a 17mm), of course, which wasn't my case.
When revisiting some photos I took of the Williamsburg Bridge (NYC) back in 2017, I came across this classic view under the bridge, from Manhattan looking towards Brooklyn. Before getting into any color correction and lighting adjustments, I focused on correcting the perspective of the bridge, wanting to achieve a more realistic look as opposed to all the distortion caused by the lens. On using the "Transform" panel (normally the third from the bottom), all I had to do in this case was to select the "guided" option and, using 2 lines to guide me, trace them in parallel to each side of the bridge. And just like magic, Lightroom brings back the original perspective that you'd see by standing at the location from where this picture was taken. From there, I manually adjusted the "Aspect" and "Scale" little by little until I got the results I was looking for.
To finish up, I went through all the usual basic adjustments I normally do for all my work, to achieve the lighting and colors of my signature style. Here's a before and after of the process:
Williamsburg Bridge, NYC | © Leonardo Mascaro
📸 • Equipment used to take this photograph: Canon 6D + Canon 16/35mm 2.8