Get it On The Level

My former business partner, Wayne, is an old Navy Salt, that's his mug over there to the left. If fact I think he invented the Navy, he may have even built the first dug out canoe. One of his pet peeves is an off kilter horizon. He claims to have a calibrated eye to 1/800th of a degree, I can vouch for it, he caught one of my images off by that much.

The problem with images which have the horizon off by a little is that when they are displayed on a wall, one person will come by and make sure the frame is level, then the next person will see that the water is running off the canvas because it isn't level and they will straighten the image to make the water level; which throws the frame off again. According to Wayne many divorces have been caused by this phenomenon.

There are two easy cures for this problem:

First as always get if right in the camera from the start, always a good rule of thumb. Use a tripod with a level or if you have a newer camera which has a built in digital level use it to get the image on the level.

Second and here is another good tip, in Photoshop click and hover over the "eye dropper" icon until the drop down menu pop out. Then click on the "ruler" icon. In the image click on one edge of the horizon or water line and drag it all the way across the image to the other edge of the horizon and let it go. This will draw a line on your horizon. Now look up at the top of the interface and you should see a "Straighten" button. In CS5 it will only straighten the horizon then you have to crop the image to get rid of the empty space created by the rotation of the image. In CS6 the "Straighten" button will automatically crop the image after it is straightened.

Now Wayne won't stress when he looks at any of your images.