Crooked Horizons in Your Photos? ? Here is a Five Minute Digital Fix

Remember the good old photography days?

Film camera in hand, you would see that perfect landscape, seascape or sunset and shoot off several shots.

Perhaps a couple of weeks later, once you had returned home and finally finished that 24 or 36 exposure film, it was off to the photo-lab to get the film processed.

You eagerly open the packet of photographs, looking for that superb seascape you took, knowing that it would almost certainly be taken up by National Geographic for their monthly magazine spread.

What do you find?

A not too bad photo, but the seascape horizon is crooked, here's your excuse, I hear you say.. "Well when I took the shot I was standing on the side of a sand dune and quickly trying to get that perfect shot while the little sailboat was still in view".

Does this sound familiar to all you budding Adam Ansels and/or Lord Snowdons?

The photo is relegated back to the packet never again to see the light of day.

I had many of those packets of not so perfect photos until the digital photography age arrived.

The Digital Darkroom has arrived

The advent of the digital camera and in fact, before that, computerized image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop has completely revolutionized the way we can now resurrect a stunning image from what at face value might have appeared to be just one of those snapshots to be relegated to the shoebox under the stairs.

What I'm going to show you in this article is just one method of taking a mundane snapshot and producing a great shot in as little as five minutes.

The example I'm going to use, is one that I have seen so many times, and have already mentioned above, namely, shots that have crooked horizons, whether this be a landscape, seascape, sunset or whatever.

The source of the image may have come from a scanned negative, scanned print or digital camera image all converted to an image format (most probably .JPG pronounced "jaypeg") that can be opened in your image manipulation software.

Correcting a crooked horizon

The human eye is remarkably perceptive at picking out features in a photograph that are made up of essentially straight lines and that those lines are not parallel, either horizontally or vertically, with the overall print itself.

These straight lines may well be the horizon, but they may also be an object in your photo that has straight lines such as buildings or walls etc...

I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS, but almost all other image manipulation software packages have similar tools so the method described should be repeatable with your own software package.

The method used will employ a little known relationship between two Photoshop functions, the Measure tool and the Rotate Canvas command.

Step ? 1
Open up your image in your image editor (in our case Photoshop) and select the Measure tool which if not visible on the Photoshop toolbar can be found by hovering your mouse over the Eyedropper tool and "left clicking".

Watch the other options window "fly-out" and select the Measure tool.

Step ? 2
Interestingly enough, we are not actually going to measure anything in the real sense of the word, nor use the Measure tool as it is usually used (i.e. measuring the distance between two points within the photograph).

With the Measure tool active, "left click" and "hold" on a spot on the left hand side of the photo (remember our example is a seascape) where the horizon meets the sea.

While still "holding down" the left mouse button, drag to the right hand side of the photo and find a corresponding point where the horizon meets the sea and then release the mouse button.

What happened? .. Well you will see that a white line has been drawn on top of the photo with what looks like little "+" anchors at each end. The line is parallel with our crooked horizon.

Step ? 3
Now the marvel begins!! Select the Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary ? command and the Rotate Canvas pop-up window will appear.

What you will notice (in the case of Photoshop anyway) is that it has "pre-filled" the pop-up rotate options with the exact rotation information to correct the crooked horizon, 1.5 degrees counter-clockwise in our example on our web-site. Click OK and see what happens ..

The photo has been magically rotated the right amount to correct the crooked horizon!

Step ? 4
All that is required now is to do a tight "crop" on the overall photograph and save it.

And there you have it!! Less than five minutes of digital image manipulation to take that mundane snapshot into a photograph that is very pleasing to the eye.

If you find the steps taking are a little hard to understand in this text based article, you can click on the link at the end of this article to see the same method explained on our website with the aid of example graphical images.

© Gary Wilkinson 2005 - All Rights Reserved

You can see this correction method complete with example images at Cor recting Crooked Horizons in Photos

Feel free to re-print this article provided that all hyperlinks and author biography are retained as-is.

Gary Wilkinson is a photographer, photographic restorer and the owner of a photographic retail business.

He is also the publisher of the http://www.restoring-photos-made-easy.com website, where other methods of correcting common photographic restoration problems are discussed.

---

The Primer on Digital Camera Printers

Once you have clicked photos through your digital camera, then... Read More

Digital RAW Workflow for Beginners

Having an efficient work flow is essential for photographers. In... Read More

Removing a Textured Pattern from a Scanned Photo ? 5 Minute Digital Fix

One of the most common problems when dealing with scanned... Read More

Start Up a Nude Photography Business

There are major obstacles to overcome to get into nude... Read More

Digital Imaging Explained

Digital Imaging is a process where an electronic photograph, scanned... Read More

Color Management, the Digital Darkroom, and Adobe Photoshop

PrefaceIn order to understand color management, it is important to... Read More

Getting Your Photos Ready for Sharing

One of the main reasons people buy digital cameras is... Read More

Digital Wedding Photography: Myth Vs. Reality

1. Myth: Digital photos are pixilated or fuzzy. Reality: most... Read More

Online Photo Sharing: Not Just for Family and Vacation Photos

You may have joined the photo-sharing craze to share your... Read More

Digital Camera Bags - Purchasing and Using

Some compact cameras are small enough to fit in your... Read More

Underwater Photography: The Wonders Under the Sea

The world of photography is an amazing one. It's been... Read More

Digital SLR Camera versus a Compact Digital Camera

Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras are excellent cameras that... Read More

Extreme Digital Photography: Beyond Point-and-shoot

When my old Olympus digital camera got broke while caving... Read More

Black and White is Beautiful

Think about Laurel and Hardy for a moment, or Charlie... Read More

Studio Photography and Digital Backgrounds

The article given here was written for Adobe Photoshop 5,6,7,CS,... Read More

Buying Your Child A Digital Camera - What You Need To Know

Purchasing any gift item for your child is a mind-numbing... Read More

Video Camcorder Formats and Media

There are way too many tape, disk and stick formats... Read More

Digital Camera Auto Exposure and Auto Focus

The digital camera being a fantastic and technologically advanced device... Read More

Digital Camera Basics

Digital Camera Basics? The VocabularyShopping for a digital camera can... Read More

Sepia Toned Prints from Your Colour or Black and White Photos ? 5 Minute Digital Fix

Quite often I will have clients bring in old photographs... Read More

How to Take Great Photos of Your Child

Children are naturally photogenic. Ive worked in studios and children... Read More

Megapixel Cameras: How Many Megapixels Do You Need?

Knowing which megapixel camera to buy can be intimidating. There... Read More

Specialized Styles of Photography

Outlined below is a list of genres that call for... Read More

Christmas Rush this Holiday Season to go to Digital Photography

So you have rushed out into the malls in a... Read More

How to Photograph Your Baby

Babies make the best and the worst subjects to photograph.... Read More

Digital Image Files ? Megapixels, Megabytes, or DPI?

When I promised readers that I was going to do... Read More

Removing Cracks and Creases when Restoring Old Photos ? 5 Minute Digital Fix

A common problem with old photos is that they often... Read More

Panasonic Digital Cameras - The History Behind Their Cameras

Panasonic is a world-renowned consumer electronics company today. Its digital... Read More

A New Way to Use Old Snapshots

If you're like me, you have hundreds of photographs sitting... Read More

How Can I Preserve My Lifetime of Memories in Photographs?

Like most folks you have probably have organized and sorted... Read More

Infrared Photography and Big City Crime

One of the major problems of the larger cities of... Read More

Terms Used The In The Stock Photography Business

So you are a small business person or web designer... Read More

How to Shoot Video of Your Kids Sports Team So That Anyone Else Will Watch It!

Break out that video camera, there is a game this... Read More