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
December 4th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
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December 11th, 2009 at 8:49 am
How about really sideways shots? My so called “wedding photographer” took some shots that are so off center that they are unframealbe!! She was holding the camera at a slant to capture what in her head was “artistic shots” but to me it was just annoying! Haha! So would it be the same process in photoshop to fix those…..they are much worse then just the horizon being a little slanted! I am trying to find the right photo editing program for the job! BIG JOB TRUST ME!
Thanks!
January 8th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
This article interesting and informative.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:18 am
Hi, I am retyping old newspaper articles for a family album. I have taken photos of the pictures within the articles that I now need to crop and insert into the documents. When I’ve taken the photo the camera wasn’t directly on top so the photos, once cropped are smaller at the top than the bottom. Is there a way to stretch the photo so that it is rectangular again as opposed to being skinner at the top? I am using photoshop cs4.
Any help would be muchly appreciated.
Frustrated!
March 11th, 2010 at 12:18 am
Easier way to straighten photo without then having to crop the picky to remove the white areas is to use Picassa – which has a wonderful straighten tool (shame on you photoshop), and then import into PS.