Claude emailed me five photos of the chateau, with each photo showing a different view. The photo that I chose to work from is shown at the top left in Fig. 1. I liked the perspective, angle and lighting of this photo. The only problem with the photo is that the vertical lines of the building tilt in towards the top (keystone distortion). This problem could have been avoided by using the correct camera and lens when the photo was taken, however, the photo can still be satisfactorily correced by using the Lens Correction filter in PhotoShop.

The image in Fig. 2 shows the photo after the Lens Correction filter was applied. Making the correction was simple. In PhotoShop CS3, I chose Filter > Distort > Lens Correction and slid the Vertical Perspective slider to the left until the vertical lines of the building lined up with the filter's image grid. The Crop tool, with its perspective feature, could also be used to correct this type of distortion.

The photo in Fig. 2 is now ready to be used as a starting point for my pencil sketches. There is no need to crop the photo into a perfect rectangle since it is intended for reference use only.

Go to step 3 to see the pencil-sketch stage.