Creative Tip: Fast way to straighten a photo in Photoshop.
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What’s the fastest way to straighten a crooked or tilted photograph? This is one of those classic bread-and-butter Photoshop tips that sometimes slips through even the most experienced designer’s bag of tricks.
Select the tape measure tool (it shares space with the eyedropper in Photoshop’s toolbox) and drag a line across part of your image that should be straight horizontal or vertical. Then choose Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.
Photoshop auto-calculates the value required to straighten your image. Click OK and your image is all squared up.
The auto-calcuation is the fun part we think makes this tip-worthy. This feature has been around since Photoshop 5.5, but it still gets a “wow” from designers who never realized it was there.
Source: This tip comes from the Intro to Photoshop class that Jason Hoppe teaches each quarter at Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts. For those that missed it last week, Jason Hoppe is the newest member of the CreativeTechs’ support team.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am
That was easy- thanks!
November 30th, 2008 at 10:24 am
We’re glad to help Phil. Thanks for visiting!
February 10th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Millions of tutorials later…
The beauty. The Simplicity. The Truth.
Awe!
February 12th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Nice. Thanks for the tip but what I’d like to do is straighten several photos that I scanned. Isn’t there an automatic way to straighten a group of scanned photos (based on their borders, of course)?
February 12th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Not long after commenting, I found the answer to my inquiry:
File | Automate | Crop and Straighten Photos
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Every time i come here I am not dissapointed, nice post