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SCRAP Photo Editor User Manual » Tutorials » Rotation

Rotation

HINT: This video tutorial is best viewed full-screen in HD.

NOTE: This video is actually for Relight, but the use of these features in SCRAP is identical.

Rotation - Text Version

Rotating an image sounds simple, but getting the alignment just right, can be fiddly and time-consuming. For example, what if you had scanned in some photos, but they ended up crooked on the screen? Or, maybe you took the photo at an angle, and you need to make the horizon horizontal? Relight's rotation tool will help you straighten these out, quickly, precisely, and easily.

Straightening Scanned Photos

Let's deal with the scanned photos first. Here I've scanned in multiple photos on one sheet to save time.

Misaligned scanned photos

However, the photos almost never stay where I put them, and so they end up at an angle. To fix this, enable the rotation tool by clicking on the rotation icon (Rotation Icon). 

Let's fix the bottom photo. So, start by dragging the center of rotation to one of the corners. Next, grab the rotation handle on the outer rim, and drag that to one of the other corners. Dragging the rotation handle by its outer rim will move it; grabbing it in the middle will rotate the image.

Start aligning scanned photos

Now we want to rotate, so grab it in the middle, and drag it to the top snap point. There you go, it's been rotated, so it's straight on-screen. 

Scanned photo aligned

Now we just crop it, and we're done, and it only took us a few seconds. 

Cropped scanned photo

Making the Horizon Horizontal

Here's a photo taken on Wellington's wild south coast:

Seagull on Wellington's wild south coast

Unfortunately, the camera wasn't level, and it looks like the InterIslander and Bluebridge Ferries are travelling downhill. This is easy to fix, too. Once again, we enable rotation by clicking on the rotation icon (Rotation Icon). This time, we drag the center of rotation and the rotation handle onto the horizon, as is shown below.

Seagull photo start rotation

Next, rotate, and drag to the horizontal snap point, and there we go: the horizon's level.

Seagull photo rotated

Correcting Leaning Buildings

Okay, one more example. Here, the photographer was clearly paying more attention to the beach than the buildings, which are on a lean. In this case, it's easiest to use the building edges. So, drag the rotation tool onto one of the building edges...

Oriental Parade - start of rotation

Then, rotate, and snap. 

Oriental Parade - rotated

There we go, no more leaning buildings. 

Rotating Numerically

That pretty much covers the rotation tool, you can also rotate numerically if you want to, just double-click on the rotation icon, and the "Scale, Crop, and Rotate" window will come up. You'll find the controls down the bottom.  

Rotation Controls

SCRAP Photo Editor User Manual » Tutorials » Rotation