A typical application of planar convex cylindrical lens is to use a pair of cylindrical lenses to shape a deformed beam. A pair of flat convex cylindrical lenses can be used to collimate and round the output of laser diodes. Another possible application is to focus a divergent beam of light onto a detector array using a single column lens.

To minimize the spherical aberration, when the collimating light beams converge into a line, the collimating light should be incident from the surface of the lens, whereas when the collimating light source is aligned, the line light source should be incident into the plane of the lens.