Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

How to fix or straighten crooked and uneven horizons in photographs

Just about every photographer does it at one stage or another. You've taken the perfect photograph and when you've got home and viewed it on the computer you realise the horizon is crooked or uneven. Take the example below where the horizon is uneven.

Photoshop CS2 makes it easy to straighten an image. Simply click on Filter - Distort - Lens Correction. Then look to the left and you'll see a tool called the straighten tool.

You can use the straighten tool on the top left and using a straight edge (horizontal or vertical) in your photo, simply click on one end of the line, hold the mouse down and release at the other end. Photoshop will automatically work out how much you need to rotate the image to make the line either perfectly horizontal or vertical for you. All you need to do then is crop the photograph to remove the blank areas on the sides.

If you have an earlier version Photoshop other than CS2, then here is another tutorial by Brad Peterson for Straightening a Tilted Horizon in Photoshop.

For those that use Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements, Helen Bradley has a tutorial called straighten a photo.

UPDATE: Our tutorials for photographers are now being continued over at SLR Photography Guide.