Oh those crooked horizons!

[Grant]

Now lets Adobe the competition has cool trick for straightening crooked horizons and verticals. While it can be done it Element is so difficult for the average user. The process requires drawing lines, checking angels, removing lines, and hand transposing these values. In Photoshop you have ruler that does this automatically, in fact it make the job so easy it make the competitions tools seem clunky! Why is that tool not in Elements?

Grant

[Wendy]

Grant,

How does it work in Photoshop ... and what so you think the best workaround at the moment for Elements?


Wendy

[Foxhound]

If your not using your crop tool for adjusting your horizons and such then you really are doing it the hard way. I thought everyone did. It's extremely simple and very fast.

Are you not using this tool for that ?

[Grant]

Wendy

In Photoshop you active the measuring tool (under the eye dropper) and draw a measuring line along your horizon. Then go to Image > Rotate canvas > Arbitrary. The angle that the measuring tool read will appear as the default. Click return will cause it the rotation. This procedure is smart enough to recognize vertical as well as horizontal. It takes far less time to do than it took me to type this out.

In Elements first open the Info Pallet. Now go to the Line Tool (accessed by "U"). Draw a line along your horizon and before you commit it note the angle in the info pallet (upper right quadrant third value down) Step back using Ctrl + Z as you don't want this line in your image. Then go to Image > Rotate canvas > Custom. You will have to hand enter this value into the box and then click return. Don't be fooled as the last value use will appear in this box you have to put in the value you noted in the Info pallet.

Grant

[Wendy]

Grant,

Thanks for info ... I didn't know about the measuring tool. What a time saver ... I do seem to have some problems getting the camera to understand about straight horizons. Surely it can't be my fault ops:


Wendy

[Grant]

Foxhound

For my particular way of working I find the clunk work around faster and more accurate. Faster probably because my hand shake more the older I get. :? More accurate because I can zoom in and work on portions of the image (eyes are not what they use to be so I do have to get closer) :?

Grant

[Foxhound]

To straighten any horizon I just select the entire image with the crop tool, slide the top (or bottom) crop line down to the horizon or any straight object in the image, zoom in as close as needed to see everything, rotate the crop line until they line up, slide the crop line back where it came from and then hit enter to commit the crop. it's straight

My hands and eyes are not what they used to be either which is why I rely so heavily on a tripod whenever possible. I don't have the nerves of steel anymore. As to my eye's, well, I had to give up my Canon AE-1 in favor of an autofocus because I just couldn't see the focus screen well enough to be able to make fairly quick shots. Oh well, let's hope these things don't get worse for either one of us. :?

[Grant]

Foxhound

"Oh well, let's hope these things don't get worse for either one of us"

The do but then you don't notice them any more.

I have a tripod with a leveling device between the tripod and the head and grids on my camera and still the horizon droops. I am beginning to suspect it is the world that is off kilter and not I. I to have moved up to auto this and auto that but can't tear myself away from manual focusing. Something about old dogs and new tricks.

Grant

[MikeH]

Foxhound,

I agree with you - the crop tool is the quickest and easiest way of adjusting horizons. It works wherever you can find a straight edge to work with, yet all tutorials I have seen have several steps (including measuring and remembering angles) before finally using the crop tool to remove white space...

In most cases all you need is the crop tool - it's as simple as that.

Mike

[editor]

Have you tried the "Straighten Image" command? It's under Image>Rotate, and for an automatic command, it often does a very nice job. Plus. it's one simple step so if it doesn't work, it's easy to undo and try something else.