Use the Optics Compensation effect to add or remove camera lens distortion. Elements composited with mismatched lens distortion cause anomalies in the animation. For example, tracked objects in a distorted scene don’t match the scene area because linear objects don’t follow the distortion of the scene.

This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.

Field Of View (FOV)

The field of view (FOV) of the distorted footage. The FOV is relative to the size of the source layer and the selected FOV Orientation. The distortion amount is relative to FOV. There is no general rule as to what FOV value applies to different lenses. Zooming in reduces the FOV, and zooming out increases it. Consequently, if footage includes different zoom values, you’ll need to animate the FOV value.

Reverse Lens Distortion

Reverses the lens distortion. For example, to remove wide-angle lens distortion, set Field Of View to 40.0 and select Reverse Lens Distortion. Selecting Reverse Lens Distortion enables the Resize control.

FOV Orientation

The axis on which the Field Of View value is based. This setting is useful when matching computer-generated elements to the rendered view angle.

View Center

Specifies an alternate center point of view. This setting is useful when using custom lenses that aren’t centered. However, in most cases, this control should be left untouched.

Optimal Pixels

Maintains as much pixel information as possible through the distortion. When selected, FOV values are no longer reversible.

Resize

Resizes the layer when the applied distortion stretches the layer beyond its boundaries. To use this control, first select Reverse Lens Distortion, and then choose an option. Off doesn’t resize the layer. Max 2X resizes the layer to a maximum of twice the original width and height. Max 4X resizes the layer to a maximum of four times the original width and height. Unlimited resizes the layer as far as it is stretched. This option may require a large amount of memory.