Crop and Straighten


One day I received a question from a National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) member. He asked if there was a better way to crop large numbers of photos that he'd scanned. He went on to explain how he'd spent hours gang scanning photos into his computer and then cropping each one individually in Photoshop. To his surprise, I replied that this could be done with an automation that was already built right into Photoshop.

Step One

Place multiple images on your scanner and scan them into your computer. The Crop and Straighten Photos automation will tend to work best on photos with clearly defined edges, so keep that in mind. When you scan them, you should get a single file with multiple photos in it.

©CARLINE ZUMBANO

Turbo Boost

If the Crop and Straighten Photos automation incorrectly splits one of your photos, make a selection of the image and some background, then press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key when you choose the automation to separate only one image.


If you place your photos too close together when scanning them, Photoshop may get confused when cropping them and inadvertently crop a photo the wrong way. To get around this, place your photos at least 1/8" apart as shown in Step One.


Step Two

Open the scanned image in Photoshop. I know I said we were going to use Bridge in this chapter, but this is one of the few automations that isn't included in Bridge (again, I have no idea why) so you'll have to use Photoshop here. Now, you can use this feature in one of two ways. First, you can draw a selection around the images that you want to crop and straighten and Photoshop will only use the photos in that selection area. Or you can just use an entire layer, which is what I use the most. Then, from the File menu choose Automate>Crop and Straighten Photos. The automation will start processing your photos and placing each one in its own window.

Turbo Boost

The Crop and Straighten Photos automation will still work even if you just have one scanned photo. It's a nice way to quickly straighten it after the fact, so you don't have to try to get it perfect while scanning.




Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic
The Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic: Automating Photoshop to Get Twice the Work Done in Half the Time
ISBN: 0321441656
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 113

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