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Straightening An Image

Lesson 35 from: Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics

Khara Plicanic

Straightening An Image

Lesson 35 from: Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

35. Straightening An Image

Next Lesson: Placing Type

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

08:02
2

Tips for Success

05:53
3

How To Undo Mistakes

06:05
4

Adobe Workspace

16:01
5

Using The Brush Tool

03:33
6

Using The Zoom Tool

04:25
7

Adobe Preferences

02:27
8

Correcting Exposure

19:15

Lesson Info

Straightening An Image

here We have another job for the crop Family of tools if we want to straighten an image. So I'm gonna grab the crop tool again. Let's say we wanna deal with this crooked horizon in the background. I can. I'm gonna clear out this resolution and will go with the original ratio. What I can dio is come over here and rotate this. So if I drag my mouse outside the edge and just click and drag this a little so I'm going to a corner and I'm looking for where my cursor turns into this double headed arrow. I call it a macaroni noodle have all these weird names for things. But when you find the macaroni noodle, you can click and drag to spin your crop so I can line up the horizon with the grid overlay that I see while I'm dragging. And then I can go ahead and hit crop and it will crop it. That's 11 way to do it. Question which tools you're in this crop toe. OK? Yeah. So I just grabbed the crop tool. I just told it to crop to the original ratio. So if you're ever in a situation like this where you...

've got this image and like personally, if I had run this through light room and whatever and I'm here now in photo shop and I'm like, OK, I don't know what I'm gonna, uh, ultimately do with this image, but I need to fix the horizon because it's bugging me. I would just come up here and choose original ratio and then get my crop tool. You could click and then get the macaroni noodle out here and just click and spin. And then when you hit enter, I've straightened it. But I have maintained my original ratio. So later if I need to make this a square or do whatever later I still have, like the maximum area toe work with. But I've also fixed the crooked horizon. Okay, I'm gonna undo that, cause there's another neat thing up here in the options bar. There is this tool right here. It's called straighten, and if you click on it, this is a picture of a level. If you look carefully, you'll see that and the way that this works. So it's still the crop tool, but it has this little straighten hidden tool up here. All I need to do now is click and dragged this line along. Whatever crooked thing, I'm trying to straighten in the image and you'll notice that it's taking a measurement. So it's measuring this angle. So right now, it says, minus 3.3 degrees. So when I let go with my mouse, it counter acts the minus 3.3, and it spins the other way to rotate that to a straight line. So basically, if you really precise and you're like, I need this to rotate exactly to be level, you could do that. Usually I just eyeball it, but, um, and then we can come up here and you'll notice that it's cutting off a bit of the edge. That's pretty unavoidable. There is one thing you can dio and let's see if it's gonna now, it'll do it. Okay, so one option. When you're doing this, you'll notice that I It's rotating here and cutting off parts of the image. And then it's also creating what what's called a wedge at the top. So when you straighten the image, you now have these little blank wedges, right? So what, you can dio if you want when you turn on content aware. Instead of cropping in to remove those wedges, you'll keep the wedges, but Photoshopped will fill them in. So now when I click the check mark, it's gonna take a little longer because it's processing it. But now it kept. So in this case, the image would have the exact same dimensions, the exact same pixels and everything. Photoshopped just used content aware fill to fill in the wedges. Does that make sense? Yeah. You have another question? Yes. Do you use the straighten tool for that? Yeah. In that case, it's the crop tool, but it has this little like straighten helper, but within it that allows you to click and drag. And then and then it prepares the crop for you without you having to manually rotate it. That's what it does. So it's useful if you know if you're trying to straighten something. And maybe there's other things happening in your image and you're having a hard time judging like who is that straight? I don't know. Then the straight and tools Excellent. Yeah, it's like a level. Basically, it's going to measure the angle, so you drag right along whatever it is that's crooked, and it's measuring the eight year. It's measuring exactly how crooked it is so it can counterbalance it by rotating the other direction. Pretty clever set up. So I used I do that a lot, but I tend to shoot my, um, shoot things crooked a lot on purpose. But sometimes then, later on, like it was to cricket or or not crooked enough, you could also crooked if I your photos if you want todo with the same techniques. So, um, the main things Teoh to really take away from this whole cropping. An image size thing is that pickles are important, right? We That's why we care about them. Because the more we have, the more we can, the more largely we can print our photos. But again, if you're a Web person, then you probably don't care as much. So it just kind of depends. That's all relative to different people. But that's why we care about pixels. It's always better to have more pixels than not enough. And when. If you're not careful and you tell Photoshopped to give you X number of pixels, it'll do it. So it's always a good idea when you're cropping two. If you're actually needing a specific size to choose this option right here with heightened resolution and leave the resolution blank unless you know for a fact that you've got more than enough pixels and that you would actually be downsizing intentionally if you're gonna crop something for, you know, a very small whatever, then that's fine. But in most cases, I would say, especially when you're new to this and you're just kind of trying to feel it out. Just leave it blank and then you'll see down below. If you change your settings down here to show you document dimensions, you'll see down below how many pixels per inch you end up with. And then you can decide. Is that enough or not enough or what? So no question, yes. So there was a question from Ed Hannon, and it was when we were showing the dog and making the extended cannabis. So the question was similarly to the content to where we just saw here. Could you fill this yet with content aware? How would you do that? Absolutely. Okay, So well, not necessarily with content aware, but you could fill it. So where am I? There we are. So here was before we extended the canvas. So what I would dio is if we go back to campus eyes, um, I would actually before I get in there. Once I cropped this, I would unlock the background because if I was going to try to fill this in with image data, it's just nice to have it. Have it not be on the same layer necessarily. But if I I just would want transparency to start, and in order to do that, you'd have to unlock the background because the background when it's locked, it cannot support transparency. It just won't do it. It's like trying to put a hole in the ground. You can dig a hole, but you still just have dirt. So if you want untidiness underneath, you gotta get up a little bit first. So in Photoshopped cc toe, unlock the background. You can just click the lock in earlier versions of photo shop. You just double click on the layer here, and then you'll get a message that says layer zero and just click. OK, then when you come in here and extend your canvas Now you have this nice blank area toe work with. So not every image is a good candidate for this. For this image, I would be like, I'm not even spending time on that. Not happening. But if you really wanted Teoh, you'd have your work cut out for you. You'd have to extend the line over here of I don't know what that is back there, a sofa, a vending machine? No idea. So you'd want to use a variety of different retouching tools to try to recreate the scene, you know? But you'd have to pay attention to perspective. So some of the challenges that you would have would be the floor because it's got a pattern on it, and it's got perspective. It's it's tapering and disappearing into a vanishing point here, um, in the image. And you would need to maintain that perspective. So and there are tools to help you do that. You can clone in perspective, but you also don't have a large sample area to work with. And you also have the challenge of depth of field because up here the focus is more in focus. I guess then it is over here this is blurred, and this is where a lot of your sample area is and you would need to sample blurred area and then UNB laurette up here. So this is challenging that be a challenge, which is why, in this image I wouldn't even go there. But you would do the same things like what we did here in this case. We extended the canvas and then we filled it in. So of course, I chose this image for that example because it lent itself to that. So you just It depends on your images and how much time you're willing to put into making that happen. But those processes air the same. So I'm hoping. I'm hoping that you guys can can see that that as we go through this like, yes, I made this into a magazine cover, and that's different than the gallery rap example. But the process is the same. It's the same thing. You just extend the campus and you fill it with color, or you re touch it and fill it in with image data. But ultimately it's the same same kind of thing

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop Resource Guide
Practical Photoshop Basics (PS action file)
Word Art
Course Files

Ratings and Reviews

Kim Williams
 

I tuned into this class hoping to glean what I cold since it was free. I ended up purchasing the class because it is FILLED with so much great information in a fun and easy to understand format. Khara is an amazing instructor - I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. Worth EVERY penny. Thank you Creative Live for offering such great material, at even more amazing prices.

smurfy
 

What an unbelievable teacher Khara is. I have wanted to learn photoshop forever but was intimidated, overwhelmed, then I watched this course. OMG I learnt so much, more then I imagined. I am so excited now to start using Photoshop, I can't wait to try out everything she taught us. With the skills we learnt over these two days I think this course provides everything I need to know to feel and more. She was outstanding, the absolute perfect teacher for someone who has never ever used Photoshop. Also great moderation by Kenna. Thank you for this awesome, amazing, wonderful course. I am sure anyone who watches this course will agree it is incredible. I couldn't recommend it more. This course was just Smurfy!

Roz Fruchtman
 

I would highly recommend Khara Plicanic's Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics. The name of the class, implies that the class is for beginners, but that's not exactly true. Most of us learn Photoshop by the features we need to know at any given time. As many will agree, there are a number of ways to get to the same end. I can only speak for myself, but... I would bet that many of us don't know all the strategies that are taught in this class! Check it out, I doubt you'd be disappointed! Khara brings a fun and relatable approach to everything she does. She is very entertaining, while being a superb instructor. Last, but not least... This class brings with it a ton of useful bonuses. Warm Regards, Roz Fruchtman aka @RozSpirations

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