Recompose a shot

Straighten, crop and recompose to instantly improve a holiday snap

1 Straighten THE horizon

In the Folders window, browse to our supplied file crop_start.NEF. Grab the Straighten tool from the toolbar. Draw a line that follows the angle of the horizon. The tool will measure the angle of tilt and automatically rotate the shot to create a perfectly horizontal horizon line.

2 Set THE As pect Ratio

Click the Crop tool icon. A Crop properties box will open. Set the Aspect Ratio drop-down menu to Photo Ratio. This ensures that the shape of the cropped photo will match the shape of other photos from your shoot. Click-and-drag the cursor to draw a crop overlay grid on the shot.

3 Recompose the image

Drag the overlay’s corner handles to tighten the composition and lose the sensor spot. Drag inside the overlay to reposition it without resizing. Use the overlay’s grid to place the girl in the centre of the frame for a more balanced composition. The darker areas outside the grid will be removed.

4 FINE -TUNE AS NE DED

When you’re happy with the crop click Apply Ratio in the Crop Properties box. The greyed-out areas around the edge will disappear, leaving you a recomposed image. As cropping is a non-destructive process, you can click the Crop tool icon at any time to fine-tune the crop.