The best way to treat linear distortion, Keystoning, foreshortening- the impression that buildings are falling over forward or backward or parallel lines seeming divergent is to negate it entirely, or at least minimize it with certain camera techniques. Traditional, view cameras were used for perfect or near perfect image management. Then came PC lenses with tilt and shift enablement. The basic concept is to keep the film plane or the sensor parallel to the vertical lines, keeping the camera level and rising the front standard to accommodate the height is one of the basic methods. For certain jobs, I still use my view camera with a grid on the ground glass.

Obviously, ALL this is not practical for casual photography, quick vacation shots, etc., and we all don't have the specialized equipment. We can still use this basic concept and work around the issue by keeping the camera level and including unwanted foreground or overhead areas in the file, in other words, include more space around the subjects and start with too much ground or sky or floor and or ceiling and then crop to arrive at the composition you prefer. Do not tilt the camera up or down!

Another alternative is to find high ground, use a ladder or elevating device, find a vantage point on the upper floor or roof of a nearby building and get yourself about halfway up the height of the subject. In my commercial architectural work, I spend lots of time on stepladders, cherry pickers, and asking permission to enter tall buildings and shoot from windows and balconies and rooftops. Slight perspective tweaks in PP are simple and easy.

If everything else fails or is impossible or impractical, we go to POST PROCESSING for perspective correction. So, why did I bother with 2 paragraphs of straight out of the camera advice?
Well, you can get a good result in PP but in many cases, the images will NEVER be 100% architecturally correct. Some of the work I do is not for architects that demand extreme accuracy. Other clients client just wants a pretty picture of a property or building for advertising real estate, landscaping, exterior decorating, etc. The architects that are more technically aware of perspective.

So...I did another version of the church, it's kinda OK but if I did that for an architect he or she would hand me my head instead of a check! When you have so many PP manipulations, sometimes things may look acceptably correct but are no longer in scale or proportion- an architectural no-no. In the analog days, tilt the easel had many of the similar issues- depth of focus problems, having to stop the enlarger lens down beyond its best sharpness aperture and it was difficult to handle multiple distortions. One of my enlargers had a tillable negative-carrier platform to pull off a few view- camera simulations.


The problem with this image is that there is keystoning but I suspect the must be some other distortion that may be intrinsic in the lens or may have occurred in the OP's basic software. Creating the correct lens profile may help. Oftentimes there are multiple distortions to deal with in both the horizontal and vertical means of correction. The evidence here is that as soon as one tower is corrected and seems is erect the other one is out of parallel. In some of the versions, submitted by others, it seems the building is off horizon-tilted.

In some of the others, the foreground is lost due to the perspective correction and the building is kinda truncated and sitting in the edge of the frame. The composition begins to look claustrophobic and cramped. So my decision in PP was to make a pretty picture and disregard authenticity. I faked additional space, did a few layers in Photoshop correcting, one tower at a time and came up with the attached mess. Not actually seeing the building, I don't know how off scale I am. If the original architect is looking down in my image and measuring it with a scaling ruler- I'm gonna have an angry ghost on my hands.

Basically, this is still a quick and dirty edit, done on a tablet. 3 different apps. 10 minutes.