Straightening up and matching angles in images
This often missed gem in Photoshop allows you to match up angles or straighten up images really quickly.
MEASURE TOOL/RULER SHORTCUT - APPLE+I
ALSO ON THIS TOOL AS A ‘FLYOUT’(APPLE+SHIFT+I)
-Eyedropper
-Colour Sample Tool
For example, you may have an image but you can see from background vertical/horizontal lines in the image that it is not straight. The old school way was to drop a guide in and gradually rotate the image in small steps until you lined it up.
Not anymore now you know this shortcut - simply find the longest line of reference in the image, zoom in and use your ruler/measure tool to draw a line along it. If you mess up, just click and draw again to start over.
Then once you are happy the ruler line follows your reference line go to:
Image>Rotate>Arbitary
…and as if by magic (kinda!) the angle required to rotate the image to make it straight is filled in from the measurement you made with the tool - so just hit return to accept this figure, and crop off the edges to make your image perfectly straight - nice!
May 15th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
The other way is to use Filter / Distort / Lens Correction and then use the hold and drag the mouse on the Angle there. This has the benefit of being able to see the entire image rotate in real time on top of a resizable grid - once you’re happy with the angle, you can even scale the image to get rid of the crooked edges, all inside the same dialogue.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Good tip, as I always say - there is always more than one way to execute a task in Photoshop!
I’m a bit impatient a-lot of the time and just hit the shortcut for ruler/measure, draw my line and rotate rather than have to go to the filter and wait for the preview to come up… each to their own though!