Apple has announced the availability of Fisheye-Hemi, a set of plug-in filters for Photoshop, Photoshop plug-in compatible applications, and the company's own photography software, Aperture, which provide correction for hemispheric fisheye lens distortion. You can give it a shot right now, for free.

Image Trends reveals that "Fisheye Hemispheric lenses in the hands of a photographer provide an expanded view of the world across approximately a 180 degree diagonal field." The primary option a photographer had until now was to render these fisheye images using rectilinear mapping techniques. Not anymore. Image Trends reveals that these methods have many drawbacks, including distortion of people near the perimeter and loss of resolution and data. Adding insult to injury, although the image is similar to what is seen by the eye, it will appear distorted when printed.

Luckily, this new set of plug-ins for Aperture is now available. Fisheye-Hemi includes three plug-ins that support a wide range of camera and fisheye lens combinations. Here's what each of them works best with, according to the makers:

"Fisheye-Hemi 1 (Circle) works best with a lens and camera combination that covers 180 degrees horizontally across the field, so the captured image appears with black edges in the corners like a globe in space.

Fisheye-Hemi 2 (Full Frame) works best with a lens and camera combination that covers 180 degrees diagonally, but the captured image has no black edges in the corners. This combination is commonly called a "full frame fisheye image".

Fisheye-Hemi 3 (Cropped) works best with a lens and camera combination that covers less than 180 degrees, where the captured image appears almost normal with mild fisheye distortion."

Fisheye-Hemi provides clarity as far as mapping is concerned. It has been proven that a rectilinear mapping will discard approximately one third of the pixels and crop to the center along the horizontal axis. Professional lenses capture up to 180 degrees, while much of the data is discarded in a rectilinear view. Fisheye-Hemi uses almost all of the pixel data in that view, Image Trends assures.

Click HERE to download the Fisheye-Hemi 1.0.0 free trial now.