How to Fix GoPro Fisheye Lens Distortion in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

GoPros are great action cameras. They are small, lightweight, and capture decent footage in almost any environment. One of their main selling points is the ultra-wide angle lens, which lets you capture a huge field of view. The downside is that wide angle comes with significant fisheye distortion. Straight lines bend, edges warp, and the center of the frame bulges outward.

For action sports like snowboarding or mountain biking, the fisheye look is part of the aesthetic. But if you are using GoPro footage in a more polished production, that distortion can make it look unprofessional. Thankfully, Premiere Pro has built-in tools to fix it. Let’s go through both the automatic and manual approaches.

Method 1: Automatic GoPro Lens Correction

Premiere Pro includes presets specifically designed for GoPro cameras that do most of the work for you.

1. Import your GoPro footage and place it in a sequence on the timeline.
2. Go to the Effects panel and search for Lens Distortion Removal. You will see a folder specifically for GoPro.
3. Open the GoPro folder and find the preset that matches your camera model and field of view setting.
4. Drag the preset onto your footage. The distortion will be corrected automatically based on the known lens profile.

Method 2: Manual Lens Correction

If the automatic preset does not match your footage perfectly, or if you are working with a different wide-angle camera, you can fix the distortion manually.

1. Import your footage into a sequence.
2. Go to the Effects panel and search for Lens Distortion (under Video Effects > Distort).
3. Drag the Lens Distortion effect onto your footage.
4. In Effect Controls, you will see several properties to work with:
   • Curvature is the main control. Drag it into the negative direction to counteract the outward barrel distortion. Start around -30 to -50 and adjust until straight lines in your footage actually look straight.
   • Horizontal Prism FX helps correct the warping at the edges of the frame. A slight negative value here can flatten out the edges.
   • Vertical Prism FX does the same for the top and bottom edges.
5. Adjust the values while watching a part of the frame that should have straight lines (a building, a door frame, a road). Keep adjusting until those lines look natural.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Expect some cropping. When you remove fisheye distortion, the edges of the frame get pulled inward. This means you will lose some of the image around the edges. You may need to scale the footage up slightly under Motion > Scale to fill the frame again.
• Resolution matters. If you shot in 4K, you have plenty of room to crop in. If you shot in 1080p, the cropping might be noticeable. Shooting at a higher resolution than your delivery format gives you more flexibility.
• Do this before color grading. Apply the lens correction first so that any vignettes or color adjustments you make later are based on the corrected image.

That is how you fix GoPro fisheye distortion in Premiere Pro. Whether you use the automatic presets or the manual approach, straightening out that wide-angle warp can make a big difference in the overall look of your production.