WORKING WITH RAW FILES
W
hen you’re shooting a landscape with a handheld
camera, it can be a challenge to get the horizon
looking perfectly straight. This can result in a
slightly tilted horizon (which can be as annoying
as seeing a skewed picture frame hanging on a wall). If you’re
shooting with a tripod, but on a soft surface such as a sandy
beach, then you may not notice the tilted horizon until you
look at the image in the Camera Raw editor.
In this walkthrough we’ll show you how to straighten an
image to counteract tilted horizons and crop it to improve
composition. Cropping and straightening are part of the same
operation, because you’ll need to crop off edges created when
rotating an image to lose its tilt.
When you use the Crop tool to crop the shot then you can
drag outside the crop window to rotate it. This enables you
to counteract any tilt. We’ll show you an easier and faster
way to straighten the image by using the dedicated Straighten
tool. We’ll also demonstrate how to set the Crop tool to
improve composition and resize an image to common print
dimensions at the same time.By editing in the raw format you can freely experiment with
your crops, safe in the knowledge that you can reset the shot
to its original size and shape at any time.Straighten and crop in Camera Raw
Counteract tilted horizons and improve the
composition of your photos using overlays
2
Fine-tune the angle
To see how effective the straightening procedure was,
click the Zoom tool. The horizon will now appear
straight. You can click the Crop tool icon at any time and
fine-tune the rotation of the crop window to ensure the
horizon is straight.1
Straighten the horizon
Open ty_elements32.dng. The file will open in Camera
Raw. Select the Straighten tool from the toolbar. Click
and draw a line that follows the tilted horizon. A rotated crop
window will automatically appear, counteracting the tilt.
Edges that will be removed by the process will become faded.BEFORE
GET THE START FILES HERE: http://bit.ly/type-files