A Favorite Photoshop Trick - Straightening Things Out

When I discovered this Photoshop trick, I was in the middle of scanning in a variety of odd-sized photographs. I was placing them loose on a flatbed scanner, and discovered that getting them exactly straight was a challenge. I didn't want to crop out the crooked edges and lose some of the image, or straighten the photos manually with the Rotate tool. And no, being extra careful when closing the scanner lid wasn't going to solve my problem either.

That's where this cool Photoshop trick came in handy. Behind the Eyedropper tool, in Photoshop CS 3, 4, or 5 (on a Mac or PC), there is a Ruler tool. (Click on the Eyedropper tool and hold down the mouse button, a list of other tools comes up, select the Ruler tool.) Previously, I had disdained this tool, because I could see no use for such an imprecise measuring method. But no longer! And besides, in this trick we are not measuring with it anyway.

Click on the Ruler tool (which lives behind the Eyedropper tool), and your mouse will turn into a crosshair. Position your crosshairs over the start of an edge of the photo, or a horizon in the photo, or any line or edge in the photo you want to be exactly horizontal. Click and hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse along the part of the photo you want to be horizontal. This creates a line. Let go of the mouse button when you reach the end of the photo's line or edge.

Then click on Image (next to File, and Edit), go down to Image Rotation, and then over and down to Arbitrary. A window pops up with a number already filled into the box. Just click "Okay," and in an blink of an eye, your photo has been straightened more quickly and accurately than any manual tweaking could have done it.

Photoshop rotates the photo according to the number in the Arbitrary Rotation box. Photoshop got that number from the ruler tool's measuring the angle between the start and finish points on the line. (This also works for tweaking photos vertically, just drag the Ruler tool down a vertical edge or line.)

See, it's easy and quick, my favorite type of Photoshop trick.