108. Straighten an Image Before You Begin  45 About Editing Images
See Also  106 Rotate an Image or Layer
107 Crop a Portion of an Image 125 Repair Minor Tears, Scratches, Spots, and Stains 126 Repair Large, Holes, Tears, and Missing Portions of a Photo
Straightening an image is simply the process of rotating it by just a few degrees. The main reason for straightening an image is to draw the viewer's attention away from distractions such as a sidewalk running downhill, a slanting horizon, a pole that's leaning to one side, and so on. You might also use this technique to deliberately place an image on a slant to make it more interesting for use on a greeting card, Web page, scrapbook page, and so on. Unfortunately, although the Editor provides you with both an Image, Rotate, Straighten Image and an Image, Rotate, Straighten and Crop Image command, neither one works very well or makes the same automatic choices that you would have made. Even applying these commands multiple times doesn't seem to really straighten an image because the changes are so small. So, to straighten a crooked image, you must rotate it manually and then crop the result. 1. | Choose Image, Rotate, Free Rotate Layer
TIP  | After straightening an image, empty spots will appear along the sides of the image; you might want to crop to remove these areas. As an alternative, you can use the techniques discussed in 125 Repair Minor Tears, Scratches, Spots, and Stains and 126 Repair Large Holes, Tears, and Missing Portions of a Photo to fill the empty areas with colors and details copied from other parts of the photograph. |
Open the image you want to straighten in the Editor in Standard Edit mode and save it in Photoshop (*.psd) format. If the image contains more than one layer, select the layer you want to straighten from the Layers palette.
Choose Image, Rotate, Free Rotate Layer from the menu bar. If the image contains a single background layer, you'll be asked whether you want to convert it to a regular layer that can be manipulated however you like. Click OK to continue. The New Layer dialog box opens; enter a new name for your newly promoted layer in the Name box and click OK again to continue.
If you want to straighten all the layers in a multilayered image, you must link the layers together first. Click the bottommost layer, and then click the Link icon on the upper layers you want to link together. When you rotate the bottom layer, the layers it's linked to rotate as well. See 91 About Layers and the Layers Palette.
 | 2. | Rotate Layer to Straighten Contents
TIPS | Suppose that you have a photo in which the subject appears crooked but the background seems straight, or vice versa. Using selection tools, you can separate the elements into different layers and then use these steps to straighten just one layer and leave the other as it is. See 88 Create a New Layer from a Selection. To guide you as you straighten the contents of a layer, turn on gridlines by choosing View, Grid from the menu bar. The lines will help you see what "straight up and down" is, and help you judge how off-kilter your original image might be. |
A bounding box appears along the edges of the layer you're about to rotate. As you move your mouse pointer near one of the handles along the edge of the bounding box, it turns into a curved two-headed arrow. Click and drag a handle clockwise or counter-clockwise to rotate the layer. When you're through, click the Check Mark button on the Options bar to save your change.
| 3. | Crop the Result
Now that the image is straight, you'll most likely have to crop it to remove the newly created empty areas along the edges. Note that some image content alongside those empty areas will be cropped as well. Click the Crop tool in the Toolbox. Click the Clear button at the right end of the Options bar to clear the dimensions from the previous crop.
Draw the area you want to keep by clicking in the upper-left corner of the image and dragging down and to the right. (The area outside the rectangle you draw is displayed in a darkened color, and will be discarded when cropping is complete.) Move or resize the rectangle as needed to select the exact area you want to retain (see 107 Crop a Portion of an Image), and then click the check mark button on the Options bar to crop the image. The outer portions of the image are cropped. If the image contains layers, all the layers are cropped to this same size.
| 4. | View the Result
When you're satisfied with the image, save the PSD file. Then merge the layers (if any) together by selecting Layer, Flatten Image and resave the result in JPEG or TIFF format, leaving your PSD image unflattened so that you can return at a later time and make different adjustments if you want.
After straightening and cropping, this image of a bell tower at a local college had some gaps on either side. I quickly filled the small gap in the lower left corner using the Clone Stamp tool, as described in 125 Repair Minor Tears, Scratches, Spots, and Stains. For the larger gap in the upper-right corner, I used the technique described in 126 Repair Large Holes, Tears, and Missing Portions of a Photo.
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