The Ruler Tool Rules in Photoshop CS5!

Have you ever gotten all the way through an image and suddenly realized that your horizon line is off just a tad and it starts driving you crazy? I try to straighten my images in Adobe Lightroom as a first step before I do anything, but there are times the horizon just gets messed up. I personally have never liked fixing horizons in Photoshop – I thought it was very cumbersome. Along comes CS5 with little known enhancement.

1. First go to the Eyedropper Tool and select the Ruler Tool in the fly-out menu.
2. Click and drag a line along the crooked horizon.
3. Go to Options Bar and select the Straighten Button.

Voila, your horizon is straightened and cropped in one big swoop!  By the way, if you do not want the image cropped, just straightened, hold down the ALT key when clicking the Straighten Button.

Sometimes it is not so obvious which is the horizon line as in the image above – it is easy to line up with the wrong horizontal or vertical line. Above is a before and after I used the Ruler Tool – it is a subtle but important difference. (Applied a Vintage preset in Adobe Lightroom to get the nostalgic look.) Hope this was helpful!…..Digital Lady Syd