Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby ChrissyC » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:46 am

Peter you made me chuckle....
thanks to this thread I learned a new trick! :)
Chrissy

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby BarbaraC » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:54 am

Peter, I'm in complete agreement with Iris.

Barbara

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby gpsmikey » Fri Jan 30, 2009 10:25 pm

OK, as an update - after several hours of trying to figure out how to get that function to work in an "Action" (could not find a way to pause the action so that I could draw the line -- "stop" grabs control, so that doesn't work), I found that in CS2 and later, there is another way (that can be used in an action). Do the following:
Filter --> Distort --> Lens Correction
Select the straighten tool (click the angle or type "A") then draw your vertical/horizontal line and click "OK" (you can even tweak the other lens paramaters if you want at this time). Presto, your picture is now rotated to level :D
Doing it that way also allows you to insert that in an "Action" and click the "dialog" box option for that event in the action and it will bring it up for you to correct your image. We now return you to your regular programming !!

mikey
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mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby Dean Athans » Tue Feb 03, 2009 11:23 am

I didn't know that PS does not have a "Straighten" tool. (PSE does.)

I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but here goes: After chosing the straighten tool, click on any point along a vertical/horizontal line in the photo, and then drag to another spot along the same line and click again. After releasing the button, the PSE rotates the photo as appropriate to give that line an exact vertical/horizontal orientation. (For veritcal alignment you have to use CTRL while clicking.)

- Dean
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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby Rosemary » Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:33 pm

As an Irish person still looking for that sloped lake, owner of a "point and shoot camera" which seems to produce a lot of sloped images, I would suggest Paint Shop Pro X2. It has a simple straightening tool as well as a perspective tool. They work well for me and are simple to use. I need simple as I am technology challenged!
If only I could get 1000 Antarctic icebergs to sit straight for me - my next challenge.

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby BarbaraC » Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:54 pm

Photoshop has pretty much every tool you could imagine, but unfortunately, they have to be stacked so they can all fit in there. The ruler tool that Mikey discovered is also the straighten tool, or at least one of them. It takes years to discover all the tools hidden away and all the tricks you can do with them. As Mikey said, learning Photoshop is like drinking from a fire hose.

Barbara

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby gpsmikey » Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:53 am

Actually for CS2 and above, the second one I found with the Filter -> Distort -> Lens Correction works even better (and you can putz with it until you like the way it looks before you accept it too - each time you draw the line, it will correct to that and you find that sometimes you are trying to reference to the wrong "horizontal" or "vertical". Works quite slick - just remember to click the angle tool before you draw the line or you will see how the "pincushion" correction tool works :lol:

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby BarbaraC » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:27 am

Also, in the Edit menu are those wondrous Transform possibilities--distort, perspective, scale, warp, and something else I can't think of right now. Not only can you use these to straighten individual elements, but you can also use them for repairs such as I did a few days ago when I scanned in a dry leaf that ended up being cracked by the weight of the scanner lid. Using the transform tools, I was able to heal up the crack in that leaf. Too bad Band-Aids don't work this way.

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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby JARHTMD » Sun Feb 15, 2009 11:49 am

I usually use Edit | Transform | Warp, like Barbara. Of course, it depends on the image (what's in the adjacent areas, etc) but this method eliminates the need for cropping or cloning.

Mikey - thanks for re-introducing me to one of the 1st lessons that I learned (& then forgot) in Photoshop4.

Jim
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Re: Straighten your picture in Photoshop the easy way

Postby NLAlston » Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Hey Mikey,

Thanks a LOT for this tip. Works exceptionally well for me.
BLESSINGS,
Nathan
(PSP7)

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