6858 Photoshop Elements has to be one of the greatest values ever in commercial software, and using this program I constantly marvel at the vast number of ways, big and small, that it can make your life easier and improve your photographic efforts for its modest price of 90 bucks.

The perfect example is the Straighten tool. I don't know about you, but I'm terrible at keeping horizons level in landscape shots or in pictures where one is usually intent on foreground objects and forgets to level the camera. Happily, Photoshop Elements 6 can fix this often shot-ruining flaw quite easily.

For example this moonlight shot taken on the (at the time frozen) lake in front of my house, This one is really embarrassing, since I was using a tripod and there was nothing in the foreground to distract me, but like I said....

Here's another, taken on the same lake at a different time of year:

To straighten the photo (it doesn't just have to be a horizon, the tool also does things like utility poles, tree trunks, and buildings), open the image and select the Straighten tool from the full edit toolbox on the far left (it lives just below the Cookie Cutter tool). Make sure that your crop settings in the Options bar are for the desired mode before proceeding further (more on this in a moment).

Now, you have to provide Elements with a reference as to where the level horizon or whatever should be, which is done by using the Straighten tool cursor to draw a line in the appropriate place. Elements will then immediately and automatically rotate and straighten your photo, and also correct it to maintain a rectangular composition if you selected that setting in the options bar.

Quick and slick.

If you are unhappy with the result, just hit Command > Z to undo it, and try again. Once you're satisfied, save the image and you're done. Note that if the crookedly registered object has a vertical axis, (e.g.: that tree or pole), hold down the Command key while you draw your reference line.

This sort of correction necessarily skews the photo's margins outside rectangular, so Elements offers several alternatives in the Options bar for addressing this.

Grow or Shrink Canvas To Fit will fill around the image's periphery to ensure that you retain as much of the original content as possible, after which you can manually crop a rectangular composition.

Crop to Preserve Background chops off the skewed edges to re-create a rectangular image, albeit with the loss of narrow "pie slices" of content at the edges.

Crop to Original Size maintains the original dimensions of your photo.

Note that if applying the Straighten tool doesn't yield the result you are looking for, Photoshop Elements has some even more powerful correction tools, the Correct Camera Distortion filter and the transform command, but tips and techniques on using them is another movie, or in this context, another still image.

Charles W. Moore

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