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Crooked Pictures?
Here's how to
straighten & crop good scenes
from bad compositions & tilted camera angles.
Software required: Adobe Photoshop
This picture, top heavy and tilted to the left, was taken while holding my D1X high above my head (shooting blind). I frequently shoot this way because it gives a different perspective than the standard "pedestrian" view. I get lots of bad shots mixed in with the good ones, but what the heck... they're digital, so it's easy to delete the really bad ones. More often than not, there's a clean picture floating around somewhere inside the borders.
Objective: Straighten
the picture out and crop it to a balanced looking scene
while retaining enough size for a good print.
First Stage:
Straighten the picture out. There are a few ways to
do this, here's my Drag the Measure
Tool cursor across the desired "level line". It
will hold & leave a trail Click on "Image
/ Rotate Canvas / Arbitrary..." The "Rotate
Canvas" box will appear automatically showing
the exact angle you've drawn. Click on the
"OK" box, and the picture will shift to your
level line (and the cursor line
favorite method. (Thanks to reader Craig Tiscareno
for showing me this particular
technique.) Choose the "Measure Tool" from
the main toolbar.
as you drag for accurate positioning. (I've added
notes to show the starting & ending
points to help you see the line I drew with the
cursor.)
disappears). The borders are now slanted, but the
picture inside the borders is straight.
Click here to continue to the next page... "Cropping Time".