I passed this information along to Pierre Pigeon in a dialogue .. he suggested a posting.

PTLens is an inexpensive alterantive to CS providing many functions and a great interface for correcting corrects lens pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective. It will read EXIF data to determine camera/lens used and will correct distortion accordingly.
____________________
From their website:
Both the standalone application and plug-in versions of PTLens run under Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista, with a monitor resolution of at least 1024x768 (DPI 96). The plug-in version works with Photoshop version 6 and above, all versions of Photoshop Elements, and the German FixFoto. Although PTLens is compatible with Photoshop 5, Paint Shop Pro, and Irfanview, camera make, model, lens, and focal length must be manually specified as they do not furnish EXIF information to plug-ins.

Several years and 20,000 lines of source code, PTLens has evolved from a simple DOS command-line program to an easy-to-use Windows application that corrects distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective. Site DpReview has compared PTLens with DxO and Photoshop CS2. See reviews for PTLens at Digital Outback Photo, About.com.

_________

PTLens site click examples on left.

$15 with a free trail available. Check it out.

That was a useful find Rob. People should like the automatic correction features.

Did you check out the panorama tools from the link at the bottom of the page? For me, that is potentially even more useful for high res landscapes.

on a side note ... there seems to be much more to this program .. of the FREE variety

Panorama Tools Plug-ins (16-bit) @ epaperpress.com - ptplugins

Panorama Tools Tutorial @ epaperpress.com - pano-index

Quote-a-Rama ... This tutorial explains how to create quality printable panoramas with Panorama Tools. Written by Professor Helmut Dersch, Panorama Tools is a free software application distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Unlike many stitching tools, Panorama Tools requires that you specify control points for stitching. This means you need to identify the same features in adjacent images so they may be joined together. In addition, to correct for lens and perspective distortion you'll need to understand the factors involved. It's a lot more difficult than simply pressing a button. The payoff? High-quality panoramas where you control the quality.

`·.¸¸.·´´``··._.·`·.¸¸.·´´``··._.·`·.¸¸.·´´``··._.·`·.¸¸.·´´``··._.·

There are MAC versions .. but they seem to cost $$$ .. @ kekus.com ... (*how's THAT for thinking different*) ... :o)

are they giving it away free because it doesnt work with the new operating system anymore by any chance? how's that for the WOW factor ;-)

you can dowload the mac or linux version of this plugin from the original site. also for free.

That's interesting. I'd been looking at the DXO Optics demo yesterday as I'm trying to decide between the Nikon 16-85 and 18-200. I'm concerned about the amount of reported distortion on the 18-200 so I wanted to see what it could do with one of the sample images from dpreview's 18-200 review gallery.

DXO does far more than I need (I use capturenx) but PTLens seems to fit the bill nicely. It's done a good job on the sample image I gave it.

My lens choice just got harder. Darn. :(

I'm using PTLens with the 18-200 VR Nikon. It works fine with the distortion correction.
Certainly a good option if you can't buy DXO or CaptureNX...