Teach_Yourself_Photoshop_Elements_2

COMMON PHOTO PROBLEMS SOLVED

W

hen we take a photo, we may not realise that the

camera was rotated at a slight angle until we look

at the image on the computer screen. A rotated

camera causes horizons to tilt. As you can see in

the starting image, the horizon rises from left to right at a

slight angle. Tilted horizons aren’t so noticeable if you’re

shooting a landscape with rolling hills, but in the case of a

seascape, any tilt on the horizon will stand out.

You could try capturing straight horizons by mounting

the camera on a tripod, but this is time-consuming and still

no guarantee that the shot will be tilt free, especially if the

tripod is resting on an uneven surface such as a pebble beach.

Fortunately, Photoshop Elements enables you to counteract

a tilted horizon so that it runs parallel with the frame’s

horizontal edges, without losing the edges of the image.

You can straighten a photo as you crop it with the Crop

tool. After drawing a crop, place the cursor outside the crop

window and a rotate icon will appear. Drag to rotate the

shot so that its horizon is no longer tilted. Then you press

Enter to crop and straighten. If you want to avoid cropping

the image, the Crop tool has a cousin that’s designed to

straighten a shot while keeping the image intact...

Straighten tilted horizons .........................................................

Make a slanted horizon run parallel with the edge

of the frame, and fill in the edges automatically

2

Enlarge to fit

The Straighten tool measures the angle of the tilted

horizon and rotates the image to counteract the angle.

Thanks to the Grow or Shrink option, the tool will increase

the canvas size so that none of the shot is cropped. You’ll still

need to use the Crop tool to remove the edges, however.

1

Straighten and grow

Open ty_elements13.jpg in the Expert editing mode.

Click the Straighten tool in the Toolbox. The process can

crop off the edges of a photo, so click the Grow or Shrink box

in the Tool Options to protect the composition. Draw a line

that follows the tilted horizon.

GET THE START FILES HERE: http://bit.ly/type-files