horizon adjustment in CS4

[burstintoflame81]

Does anyone know a simple way to adjust horizon in CS4? Can you put grids on the screen to assist with this? I tried manually turning the image and then cropping, but the crop seemed to come out crooked as well. I know you can go into Adobe Camera Raw, but that becomes a pain if its no longer a raw file ( like 3 HDR images and trying to adjust each one the same in ACR before blending the 3 would be a pain. )

 

[hulk]

Here's what I do:

- Create a new layer
- Draw a horizontal line on the new layer (use pencil and hold shift)
- Select layer with your actual picture
- Go to Edit > Transform > Rotate
- Rotate the picture until the horizon in the picture is parallel to the horizontal line from the new layer you made (zoom-in to make sure you're spot on)
- Confirm and you're done!

 

[hulk]

Wow, apparently there's a much easier solution. (Although it rotates the full canvas)

 

[syphlix]

you can use the ruler tool and draw a line across your horizon, it tells you the degrees then u just do the rotate custom

 

[Dwig]

For a visual reference, my preference is to drag a guide off of the horizontal ruler. If you don't have the rulers on by default simply access View/Rulers. You can then simply mouse down on the ruler across the top and drag out onto the image dropping the line near the horizon. You now have a Guide (show/hide using the View/Show/Guides menu option and remove using View/Clear Guides.

Guides do not print so there's no need to turn off a layer where a line is drawn, etc. Guides do take up a small amount of file space and do save in JPEG files. If you are creating very small JPEGs for web use, clear the guides first or use "Save for Web and Devices..." which creates smaller JPEGs than "Save as..." anyway

 

[dhilberg]

The easiest way is to do what syphlix suggested, which is to use the Ruler Tool. Select the Ruler Tool, find a horizon or something that you know should be horizontal, click on one end, drag a line to the other end and unclick. Then select Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary... > and automagically the number of degrees you need to rotate the image to have that line perfectly horizontal is displayed in the box. Click OK.

You can also do what Dwig suggested, and drag guides down from the ruler.

Also, it can be done with Filter > Distort > Lens Correction... Make sure both "Show Grid" and "Preview" are checked at the bottom. Under where it says "Transform" you can adjust the angle of the canvas, in fractions of a degree. This method works as a filter, so you'll want to duplicate your background layer first. That way the filter is applied to the copy and you can delete it if you need to redo it or whatever.

 

[burstintoflame81]

I did not actually try these yet because I am not at home. However, they seem like exactly what I was looking for. The only concern or question I have now is, when you rotate, do you just recrop because doesn't rotation make the edges of the picture out of whack? So would that be the last step? To crop the pic and fix it?


While I am on the topic of cropping, another question I had with photoshop is how do you specify a specific crop size if you are trying to make a specific print? I noticed in the drop down tools you can pic 4x6,5x7,8x10 etc. but what if I wanted to do like a 20x30 or something like that? ( or is everything else just a larger equivalent of the basic sizes? )

 

[dhilberg]

I did not actually try these yet because I am not at home. However, they seem like exactly what I was looking for. The only concern or question I have now is, when you rotate, do you just recrop because doesn't rotation make the edges of the picture out of whack? So would that be the last step? To crop the pic and fix it?

Yep, just crop it down until you get rid of the empty triangular-shaped sections created by the rotation.

While I am on the topic of cropping, another question I had with photoshop is how do you specify a specific crop size if you are trying to make a specific print? I noticed in the drop down tools you can pic 4x6,5x7,8x10 etc. but what if I wanted to do like a 20x30 or something like that? ( or is everything else just a larger equivalent of the basic sizes? )

Just crop the image to the width:height ratio you want to print (actual physical dimensions don't matter):

4 x 6 = 1:1.5
5 x 7 = 1:1.4
8 x 10 = 1:1.25
20 x 30 = 1:1.5

When I crop, I select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, and up in the toolbar where it says "Style" I select "Fixed Ratio" and plug the appropriate numbers into "Height" and "Width."

Example: For a vertical 8 x 10 put 1 in the "Width" box and 1.25 in the "Height" box. Then click and drag on the image to create your marquee, which will stay that same ratio no matter how large you create it. Position it how you want it on the image, then Image > Crop. Boom, instant 8 x 10.

Trick: If you make the image window slightly larger than the image itself, so that the background (gray area) is showing around the image, you can actually click to start your marquee out there. Click and drag toward the image, and it will automagically start the marquee right at the edge (or corner) of the image when you reach it, so you don't have to eyeball it. Keep dragging it diagonally until it reaches both sides of the image (it won't go beyond the edges of the image) and then unclick. Move it around to where you want it and then Image > Crop.

 

[burstintoflame81]

Perfect, thanks guys.

 

[inTempus]

I've found the easiest way is to use ACR. There is a tool in ACR that allows you to draw a horizontal line on your image and then ACR automatically corrects the horizon for you AND crops it for you.