Straightening Multiple photos

When we have scanned some photos on a page and these are not all aligned correct, then we can fix them all in a very quick way by straightening and cropping.
We use the option “Crop and Straighten Photos”.
Just click the button “File” in the menu bar, select “Automate” in the drop-down menu, and click the “Crop and Straighten Photos”.

This will be a very quick and correct way to staighten every scanned photo onto a separate page.

Content-Aware Scaling of Photos

A new feature in Photoshop CS4 is the “Content-Aware Scaling”.

What this feature does is, it scales an image while the size of an area in the picture is preserved.

Why do you need this?

For example, when you make picture from vertical to a horizontal photo, without removing any content of the photo.

The first thing you should do is, make the background layer a “normal” layer.

This function does not work on a background layer, this is in fact locked (1).

Double-click the background layer (2) and in the dialog “New Layer” (3) click the OK button.

When a normal, unlocked layer is made from the background layer, we can continue.

Click the “Edit” button in the menu bar and select “Content-Aware Scale” in the drop-down menu. This puts drag handles around the picture.

At the top of the options bar you will find the “protect Skin tones” button (2).

This button can be used when you have a picture in which ther is a person and you think the size of this part of the picture needs to be maintained while the image scales.

This works properly only when there is the size of a head to keep, but when I use the dimensions of another object to maintain, eg the balloon in the image below is completely wrong (3). The balloon is more like a squeezed lemon.

However, it is better when you retain a part of a selection.

So first we make a selection of the balloon and save this selection.

How to do that, you would have known by now.

In the “Protect” click the downward pointing arrow and choose the selection that you just saved (1).

When you click and drag a handle (2), you will see that the size of the photo changes, all content is preserved and especially that the dimensions of the balloon remain the same (3).

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