Lightroom 3 Straightening

redhed17

redhed17

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Hello, I'm just giving Lightroom 3 a try to see if I'll like it, but have come across a problem. In Photoshop, if I want to straighten an horizon I use the Measure Tool and then rotate the canvas. I can zoom in to the image when I do this to get more accuracy.

In Lightroom it seems that I have to go into the Crop tool to get the Straighten option, where I can either move a slider which rotates the image and shows a grid as an aid, or I can use the Straighten Tool as in Photoshop, but I don't seem to be able to zoom into the image like in Photoshop. Is this not possible, or am I missing something? :shrug:
 
No your not missing anything. When you select the crop tool the image reverts to the "fit " screen option.

Personally I've not found this to be a problem when making even slight adjustments, although I can see this could be a problem if you are using a small monitor. If you really need to zoom in you could always "Export to Photoshop" and do it that way. Not very elegant but it would work
 
Ive never had an issue with needing to be zoomed in either, but I guess if you wanted you could use the rotate tool in the lens correction panel, which will let you be zoomed in whilst rotating, for very minor adjustments.
 
Taken from the Lightroom forums

'Unfortunately there is no way to zoom in while cropping in LR. Getting rid of your side and top/bottom panels (Shift+Tab) might help a little to get a bigger picture.'
 
Thanks for posting everyone. :thumbs:

I was obviously hoping I was missing something obvious. :(

Non of the options I've seen are intuitive to use for me. :shake: Ah well. :(
 
The Ruler tool is there you just need to find it.
While in the Crop Tool just hold down the Ctrl key and you can choose you Horizon as in Phtotshop.

If anybody would like instructional videos for Photoshop, Elements or Lightroom that they cant find, I would be happy to do specific subjects and put a link to them.
I have permission from the Admin staff so feel free to PM me to look at the problem on the forums or. it would be advantageous to post on the forums first
so others might learn new stuff.
 
Found the Ruler Tool no problem Pete (the short cut was good though;)), it is just that sometimes it is hard to get an accurate level adjustment without zooming in, which you apparently can't do in Lightroom. :nono: :(

The Bridge + Adobe Camera Raw combination seems better for editing, and not using any of the other Lightroom features imho.
 
redhed17 said:
The Bridge + Adobe Camera Raw combination seems better for editing, and not using any of the other Lightroom features imho.
Click to expand...

I agree with that, Lightroom is great but for restoration its no use at all really, I use Bridge and ACR all the time. It's what suits you.
 
Pete Bird said:
I agree with that, Lightroom is great but for restoration its no use at all really, I use Bridge and ACR all the time. It's what suits you.
Click to expand...

? As in restoring scans of damaged old prints, etc.?

Certainly that's not what Lightroom is intended for - it's a digital workflow tool.

Though I must admit that Bridge + ACR doesn't really fit the restoration billing either, it really sounds like a job for Photoshop :thinking:
 
Musicman said:
? As in restoring scans of damaged old prints, etc.?

Certainly that's not what Lightroom is intended for - it's a digital workflow tool.

Though I must admit that Bridge + ACR doesn't really fit the restoration billing either, it really sounds like a job for Photoshop :thinking:
Click to expand...

ACR and Bridge are a must for me as a pre restoration tool. Of course I use Photoshop for the manipulation but I browse all my files in bridge, I correct colour and do initial cropping in ACR and Also to bring some contrast to faded areas with the Graduated filter tool. I never Scan in old photos I use my camera so I can have a Large enough file to blow up to 400% without to much pixilation and they are raw files, even keep them RGB for Greyscale to remove any staining from tea or water damage etc.

Nothing does it all but I use all the tools available to me just to make my life easier.
For my photography workflow I use Lightroom if I have a large amount to go through but I can do most of what I need with ACR and Bridge.
In fact till LR3 I did all my sharpening in PS and still do most of the time.

What is Digtal Restoration if its not a digital workflow ?:shrug:
 
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Ah, that makes things a bit clearer. If you're capturing the originals as a RAW file in a camera, using ACR makes a bit more sense than it might have with TIFFs.

There's a nice paragraph in this article by one of the guys that created Lightroom about the early days of the project at Adobe that illustrates where they were coming from.

Jeff Schewe said:
In December of 2002, Mark, UI designer Sandy Alves, project lead Andrei Herasimchuk and Thomas Knoll visited my studio for a couple of days of brainstorming product ideas directed towards photographers. During that meeting I expressed the importance of developing an application to deal with lots of images easily and efficiently instead of an application used for spending a great deal of time on a single image-in the 1990’s it was all about how long an imaging artist spent working on an image, the new millenium dictated an application designed to spend as little time as possible working on many images.
Click to expand...

this was built round the idea that you would make adjustments to one photograph, then paint the same adjustments to a series of others from the same shoot. I'll take a bit of a guess that's not how you work - at least it doesn't when I'm dealing with my scanned film.

I'll have to admit that I've never got on with Adobe's Bridge after my experiences with its first incarnation in CS2; I found it terribly clunky and obviously aimed at people dealing with a lot of other, non-photographic formats.

As it happens, I do also manage my film scans in Lightroom to keep all the metadata in one place - if I'm looking for photographs of buildings by Norman Foster, I don't have to do two searches in two different places. To the best of my knowledge, Bridge still doesn't read tags from the Lightroom database.
 
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I wasn't on about restoration, just opening up some RAW files, choosing one to edit, and one of the changes being made adjusting the level. In ACR I can zoom in to make it as accurate as possible, in Lightroom it seems I can't.

If all I want to do is open and image, basic editing, then save a copy, then there is not much between the two methods as far as I can see. :shrug: Not being able to easily level an image makes Bridge + ACR the winner for me. It's a small thing, but there you go.

Sounds like I have loads of wonky images doesn't it. :lol:
 
Sorry guy's, I was just making a point that you use the tools that you are comfortable with.
I have to use all this stuff because of what I need to do.
I like the easiest way out so grab at anything that will do the job.

The only thing to know is there are so many ways of getting the job done, some are better than others but they are all correct.

As far as Bridge being clunky, I have to admit I have only been using it for about 18 months but now I love it for what it can do.
 
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