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Ideally, you'll want to shoot your images straight, in-camera. Since straightening also require you to crop your image, when you straighten, you'll end up lowering the pixel count of your image if you have to straighten it later. Nevertheless, there will be times when you'll need to straighten an image, because you were sloppy when shooting, or conditions didn't allow you to shoot level, or because it was difficult to tell what was level while you were shooting.

Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom and Capture NX all have very good straightening tools, as does Photoshop Elements.

Step 1: Open the Image
File>Open or Ctrl+O



Step 2: Select the Ruler Tool
Photoshop doesn't have an actual straighten tool, but you can use the Ruler tool to automatically straighten an image. The Ruler tool lives in the Tool palette in the same cell as the Eyedropper tool.



Selecting the Ruler from the keyboard~the keyboard shortcut for the Ruler, and all other tools that live in hte same menu is I. If you press Shift-I repeatedly, you'll cycle through the Eyedropper, Color Sampler, Ruler, and Count tools.

Step 3: Define a Straight Edge
Click with the Ruler tool on one end of something in the image that should be straight. (I'm using the bottom of the metal garage door). While holding down the mouse button, drag to the other end, a straight line will be superimposed over the image.



Step 4: Rotate the Canvas
Choose Image>Rotate Canvas?Arbitrary, and Photoshop will present the Rotate Canvas dialog box. The Angle field, which specifies how the image should be rotated, will automatically be filled in wiht whatever value is required to straighten the line you defined with the Ruler tool. Click OK, and your image will be rotated.



Step 5: Crop the Image
After rotating, your image will no longer be rectangular. Photoshop will have automatically changed the canvas size to encompass the entire, now askew image.



Aperture, Lightroom, and Capture NX provide straightening tools that perform rotation and cropping at the same time, making for a simpler straightening process.

Ta da! Here is your final straight image!


Technorati tags: digital, straightening, toolbox

Posted in: digital, straightening, toolbox on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at at 8:20 PM 11 comments    

The hardest part of cropping is simply deciding what kind of crop you want. Using the crop tool if fairly easy, most make it easy to explore a variety of crops. I'm using Photoshop, but you should be able to follow along with any editing program with a crop tool.

Step 1: Open the Image

I'm using a tutorial image from Complete Digital Photography

The focus of the image should be on the birds on the telephone wire.

Step 2: Drag out a Crop
Select the crop tool. In Photoshop, you can do this by pressing C. Click to define the upper left corner of the crop you want, and then drag out a rectangle to define the crop. It doesn't matter if you don't get it correct the first time, you can always correct it later.



Step 3: Adjust the Crop
A rectangle of dotted lines will appear, indicating where the image will be cropped. In Photoshop, you will have the option of masking out the uncropped part of your image. Blocking out the uncropped areas makes it easier to tell what your image will look like. In the control bar at the top of the screen, you can define the color and opacity of the crop mask, called the Shield.

An advantage of using the semiopaque shield is that it allows you to see what else is in the image.



The crop rectangle provides control handles at the corners, and in the middle of each edge. You can drag these to reshape the crop. Make any adjustments that you want. I clicked the bottom handle and dragged (or is it drug?) up to crop out the tree.

Step 4: Make the Crop
Press Return, or double click within the crop rectangle to accept the crop. Your image will be cropped and appear in a new, smaller window.

Sometimes, it can be hard to tell if you like the crop until you've accepted it. If you decide it's NOT what you want, undor and try it again.

This example uses a free-form crop, meaning the final image has a different aspect ratio than the original. There will be times, however, when you want to ensure that your final result has specific proportions and you'll want to constrain your crop to a specific crop ratio.



Step 5: Revert to the Previously Saved Version
I want to try a different crop of the image. Choose File>Revert to return to the original version.



Step 6: Configure the Crop Tool
I want to print this image on a 4"x6" paper, so I want to ensure that the final image has the proper proportions. Select the Crop tool. On Photoshop's control bar, enter 6 in the width field and 4 in the height field.



Step 7: Make Your Initial Crop
Click and drag to define a cropping rectangle, just like you did previously. This time the crop will be constrained to a rectangle with a 6:4 aspect ratio.

Step 8: Adjust the Crop
When working with the constrained tool, it can be difficult to get the crop exactly right on the first try. After you've defined the initial crop, you can then click within the cropping rectangle and drag the crop around to position it.

Step 9: Make the Crop
As before, press Return or double-click within the croipping rectangle to make the crop.



In Photoshop, you can open the Crop menu on the control bar to access the predefined cropping constraints.



Remember that you don't HAVE to crop to the same aspect ratio your camera shoots, or to any aspect ratios in your image editor. Very often, the best crop for an image has an unusual aspect ratio. Landscapes often look better with a long, skinny, panoramic crop, while other situations may look best with a narrow, vertical crop. The crop tool allows for great creativity, so don't be afraid to experiment! Don't hesitate to play around with different crops.

Posted in: cropping, digital, photoshop, toolbox on Friday, April 11, 2008 at at 8:20 PM 16 comments    

Today I am going to introduce you to one of my favorite Photoshop "tricks". While you can manually do a million different things to your photographs, actions allow you to do them with one simple click.

I'll show you how much fun they can be! Here are examples of a few of my own favorites.

After

Posted in: actions, digital, photoshop, tricks on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at at 8:40 PM 14 comments    

From time to time I plan on posting some of the 'tricks' I've learned in Photoshop. I used Photoshop 7, which is an older version, but it was FREE and that's my favorite kind! I am self-taught when it comes to Photoshop and most of what I know I learned through either trial and error or by browsing the internet and learning from others.

The first, and one of the easiest, 'tricks' I want to show you is how to convert a picture to black and white from color. Really simple huh? Well, I'll add in another component just to spice things up a bit. How to retain color in parts of the picture, so now you have a picture in B&W and color! Cool huh?

First, open Photoshop. Easy enough, right?

Go to File>Open (or press Ctrl+O)
Choose a picture, I've chosen one of a lilypad that I took last summer.

• Next you will need to make a new layer of the picture. This can be done a few ways; 1. Layer>New Layer, 2. In your layers palette click on the paper looking part in the bottom right, next to the garbage can, or 3. Shft+Ctrl+N

• Then go to Image>Adjustments>Desature (or simply hold down Shft+Ctrl+U)

• Now you have a B&W image on top of your original color image.

• Next comes a trickier part. Choose what you want to keep colored and what will be B&W. I decided to leave the lilypad in color and make the background B&W.

• Now using your eraser, simple 'erase' the B&W portions of your picture that you want to be in color. I usually zoom in as close as I need to be able to make it look as seamless as possible.

• When it looks the way you want it to, flatten your image. Layer>Flatten image

• If you like the picture, you can stop here. I chose to make the pink in my lilypad a bit brighter then add a frame. I'll show you those tricks another time.

Posted in: Black and White, colorize, digital, photoshop, tricks on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at at 9:01 PM 11 comments