How To Quickly & Accurately Straighten An Image In Photoshop

Jun 8, 2009 by Jennifer Farley

Posted under: Blog

Here’s a quick way and easy way to accurately straighten up your photos if they’re looking a bit lopsided. As with many techniques in Photoshop, there is more than one way to straighten a photo. This method uses the measure tool.

1. Open up the picture that needs to be straightened. Here’s one I took where it looks like the water is running towards the right hand side of the image.

2. Select the Measure tool from Photoshop’s Toolbox. It’s one of the tools hidden underneath the eyedropper tool. Click and hold the mouse on the eyedropper till you see the flyout menu.

3. Look for something in the picture that you know should be straight. In this case, the horizon line between the sky and sea.
Click-and-drag the Measure tool horizontally along this straight edge in your photo, starting from the left and extending to the right.

You’ll notice that as you start to drag, the angle that you’re dragging at, will be displayed in the Info palette (if you have it open) and also at the top of the screen in the Options Bar.

4. Choose Image > Rotate Canvas. Then choose Arbitrary, which opens up the Rotate Canvas dialog box.

Here’s the really clever part. Photoshop will have already filled in the angle required and whether it should be rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise. So all you need to do now is click OK.

Voila! A straightened picture. As you can see, we’re left with some extra canvas, so we need to crop off the excess.

5. Select the Crop tool from the toolbox or press C, then drag out a cropping border. When you’re happy with the crop, press Return/Enter.

And the final, cropped and straightened image looks like this.

Technorati Tags: Photoshop, tutorial, digital photography

Is this a method you’ve used before in Photoshop? What other ways have you straightened images?

Tags: digital photography, Photoshop Tutorials

7 Comments + Add Comment

LaurenMarie - Creative Curio June 8, 2009 at 10:50 pm

I’ve used the Measure Tool before to do this, too, quite frequently with scanned images. It’s great! Makes it sooo easy and no guessing. Before I learned about using it in combination with the rotate arbitrary, I’d always wondered how in the world anyone could guess at what precise angle they needed to rotate something. Now I know the main reason that feature is there, too!

LaurenMarie – Creative Curios last blog post..New Designy Stuff Around the Interwebs
Leon June 8, 2009 at 10:59 pm

Try ‘Filter – Distort – Lens Correction – Straighten Tool’

You can fix various other things like Chromatic Aberration, Vignette and Perspective from the same screen too.
Heather T. June 9, 2009 at 12:26 am

You are my HERO!!!!!!!!! I never knew about this!!! In CS2 there are only 3 tools under the eyedropper, but the measure tool is one of them…

I’ve always just dropped a guide down and moved the image around till the horizon line was parallel to it. This is called the Fudging Eyeball method.

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Jennifer Farley June 9, 2009 at 8:33 am

Ha, ha Heather! I love the fudging eyeball method too. I’ve used that plenty of times, in fact I was just showing off with the measure tool

Hi Leon, Good one. That Lens Correction filter is the business. I find I use it a lot for getting rid of barrel distortion but will defo look into using it for straightening too.

Hi LaurenMarie. I know! The measure tool is a great little hidden gem, isn’t it?
Craig June 9, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Why would you make a tutorial on straightening an image and have the final result crooked??? The water now leans to the left. It looked crooked to me so I checked using the quick check below.

Quick check. Zoom in to the water line. Open crop box and put crop line along water line.

craig
Jennifer Farley June 9, 2009 at 8:16 pm

Hi Craig. At the late hour I was writing this tutorial, it looked straight to me!
prakash August 17, 2009 at 2:09 pm

excellent tips. i have 4yr exprience in designing. but i dont know it.

Thanks