Straightening Photos 101

Let's pretend for a moment that I'm not the world's most perfect photographer, and once in a while I take a crooked photo. For Adobe Photoshop users, I'm going to show you a quick tip on how to straighten photos. Here is a crooked photo I took at Kristen Kilker and Matthew Drummond's wedding - It's a shot I like to take a lot from the back of the church laying on the ground- and the original photo is usually crooked ;)

What you do to achieve straightnes is:

Grab the ruler tool that is in the drop down menu under the eye dropper.

Find a line you want to make straight.

Draw your line by clicking two even points along your subject (in this case my stairs).

Go to Image, Rotate Canvas, Arbitrary and click OK. This will give you the image below.

*Please keep perspective in mind- in some photos the lines should NOT be straight due to your perspective- you need to be paralell to the line when you shot it for it to make sense to staighten it.

Don't forget to recrop!

And voila. Straight.

So when you have a photo that's not straight and it NEEDS to be, use your ruler.

DO NOT try to crop it with a tilt- it NEVER works right- it will still be off. The ruler uses exact measurements.

If you're having trouble or don't have Photoshop, send it to me through email and I'll send it back to you straight.

I'm always here to help!