{"id":144608,"date":"2019-09-27T21:01:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T19:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=144608"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:30:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:30:20","slug":"straighten-image-photoshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/straighten-image-photoshop\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the fastest, easiest way to straighten an image in Photoshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CrookedMaybe you’re in a hurry to snap a sunset photo. Maybe your tripod wasn’t quite level. Maybe you handed your camera to a stranger and they tilted at the last moment. Whatever the reason, you’re stuck with an angled picture.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, there’s a quick and easy way to straighten that image horizontally or vertically in Adobe Photoshop! Just follow these simple steps.<\/p>\n

Looking to try Photoshop? Give it a whirl here:<\/p>\n

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7 quick steps to straighten a photo in Photoshop<\/h2>\n

1. Import your photo in Photoshop: File > Open > select your image<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll use a screenshot from “Battlefield Earth” because that entire movie was shot at a Dutch angle for some reason.<\/p>\n

\"Battlefield<\/p>\n

2. Left-click the Eyedropper Tool<\/strong>\u00a0on the left side and select the Ruler Tool<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Click<\/p>\n

\"Ruler3. With the Ruler Tool selected, you’ll simply make two clicks.<\/strong> See if you can find a horizontal straight line in your image. Maybe it’s a windowsill or a door frame. Anything that is level in real life will work.<\/p>\n

It can also work with a vertical straight line – the side of a building or a flag pole can come in handy here. We’re going to draw a line along anything straight.<\/p>\n

Click on one point of the line that should be horizontal, then click on another point in the image that should be horizontal, like this:<\/p>\n

\"UsingAfter your second click, a temporary line is left behind. That’s what Photoshop will use to straighten the image.<\/p>\n

4. Go to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Arbitrary\"<\/p>\n

When you click it, it does the math to rotate your image perfectly.<\/p>\n

\"RotateClick OK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

5. Boom! Your image has been rotated. Photoshop expanded the canvas to fit the whole image. Because we made our line along that metal rail in the back, it is now level.<\/p>\n

\"Rotated6. Obviously, we don’t need all that extra image, so let’s crop it down. Select the Crop Tool<\/strong>, then click and drag\u00a0a box around just the image you want to keep.<\/p>\n

\"Crop7. Press\u00a0Enter<\/strong> and all the distracting stuff goes away.<\/p>\n

Look at this beautiful final result of Barry Pepper running away from what could have been a bright future in Hollywood!<\/p>\n

\"Rotated<\/p>\n

If you’re stuck without a horizontal or vertical line to get your photo straight, you can always free rotate that bad boy until your crooked image looks right. In that case, select your entire canvas<\/strong>, then go to Edit > Transform > Rotate.<\/strong> You’ll be eyeballing it, but at least you can come close!<\/p>\n

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More about image editors<\/p>\r\n

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5 best apps for drawing on the go \u25ba<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n \r\n

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4 free apps for editing photos on your smartphone \u25ba<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n

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5 best online Photoshop alternatives \u25ba<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n \r\n

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Beginner\u2019s guide to Photoshop \u25ba<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got a crooked image? Fix it fast with Photoshop!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9139,"featured_media":144641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":1},"categories":[2518,2441],"tags":[1079,1062],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-144608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guides","category-how-to","tag-adobe","tag-photoshop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325472,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144608\/revisions\/325472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144608"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=144608"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=144608"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=144608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}