Yano What I Mean?: Straightening a Picture

Straightening a Picture

Haven't posted up a 'Tip & Trick' in a while.

Unfortunately, this is just for you all that have Photoshop - I'm using 7, but it may be available in the earlier versions as well.

Have you ever taken a picture and after you see it on screen, realize that it's not straight? You could use Photoshop's rotate to fix it, but it will be a
little trial and error as to whether or not it's truly straight.

Here's my original picture - you can see that the bottom line of the shadow isn't straight (we're standing on the ledge).

Here's the steps I would take to straighten out the picture a bit:

1) Open up the picture in Photoshop
2) On the side toolbar, click and hold on the eyedropper icon, and you'll be able to choose the ruler tool	-hold and choose ruler
3) Oh your photo, find a line that you can use as a reference for the program to straighten. In my photograph, it's the line of the ledge we're sitting on - I want that line to be horizontal. That's really the only line I could use. If it was a photo of a house or something with a horizon, there would be more references to choose from.
4) Using the ruler tool, click on one end of your reference line, then click on another part of that reference line. This will create a line that traces your reference line - if the photo is crooked, you'll see that the line is crooked, too.
5) Once the reference line has been marked, go to Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary. This will come up with a window called 'Rotate Canvas' that will have an angle in there - this is the amount of rotation needed to straighten the line you created in #4. Click OK.
6) You'll see that your picture has been rotated, but the reference line that you had specified is now straight. All you need to do is select the portion of the picture you want to keep by choosing the Marquee or Crop tool. Select the part of the picture that you want cropped out - unfortunately, this process usually crops out part of the picture.
7) Crop the picture, and you'll see that it has been straightened!

Here is the finished product, next to the original:

Before After

Posted by Yano at July 25, 2005 07:16 PM

Comments

Yano you've definitely got an advanced case of Geekositis. I wouldn't have noticed the problem in that first pix...which is why we need folks like you out there!

Posted by: SusanG on July 25, 2005 07:25 PM

What can I say, I'm anal about certain things!

Posted by: Yano on July 25, 2005 07:37 PM

Huh...maybe it's me but I find that the asymmetricalness (is that even a word?) of the original photo is what makes it more interesting than the "fixed" version. I do like that the shadow is darker in the after photo though.

Posted by: xinh on July 25, 2005 11:58 PM

interesting

Posted by: Master Foley on July 26, 2005 09:08 AM

I've been wanting to ask you if you know how to do this!

This comes up a lot with short track pics because of the lines formed by the ice. Even the ones taken by professional photographers. ;)

You are the PS Queen! *bows*

Posted by: Denizzy on July 26, 2005 09:51 AM

I swear, I am incapable of taking a vertical photo. It always looks like a drunk person was holding the camera!

Posted by: noelle on July 27, 2005 11:21 AM