Straightening your photos and adjusting their composition can make a big difference in the final look of your images. With Photoshop’s tools, you can fix crooked horizons, add missing details, and even enhance compositions with precision and ease.
Coming to you from Aaron Ness flernThis practical video demonstrates how to use Photoshop’s Crop and Straighten tools to clean up your images. Ness begins with a simple landscape: a jagged horizon. Using the crop tool, he explains two ways to fix this problem. The first involves manually rotating the image by clicking and dragging on the edges of the crop frame. While this may work, Ness says it’s not the most accurate. The second method uses the built-in Straighten tool, which allows you to draw a line along the horizon to automatically correct the angle. This precise approach ensures that your image is perfectly aligned.
Ness then introduced Generative Expand, an AI-powered Photoshop feature that fills in missing areas around your photo after cropping or straightening. Traditionally, fixing a tilted photo means cropping out parts of the image, but generative dilation allows you to preserve the original frame by seamlessly creating new content. Ness has demonstrated this with impressive results, showing how AI-generated edges blend naturally with the original photo. This tool is particularly useful for situations where maintaining the full view is important.
Another key point of the Ness cover is how to adjust the structure using the rule of thirds. He explains how the crop tool includes grid guides to help align key elements within the frame. By placing the horizon or subjects at the intersections of the grid, you can create a balanced and visually appealing image. Ness highlights how these small adjustments can transform a shot, making it more appealing while still keeping it based on strong creative principles.
Ness also emphasizes using generative fill to remove distractions. After selecting areas with the Selection Brush tool, you can have Photoshop automatically replace unwanted elements with new content. This feature offers many variations, giving you creative flexibility while keeping the process efficient. Watch the video above for full details on Ness.
