How To Straighten & Crop A Photo In Adobe Lightroom Classic

Crop And Straighten Photos Adobe Lightroom

Straighten and crop an image

Do you want to fix a crooked photo? It’s quick and easy to straighten and crop your photos using the Crop Overlay Tool and Straighten tool in Lightroom.

You can get a free Adobe Photography Plan 7-day trial here.

  1. Open Lightroom. In the Library module select the photo that you want to straighten. Then, click on the Develop module at the top of the screen or use the keyboard shortcut D.

    1 - Select Photo to Straighten Lightroom - Library Module

    The image opens in the Develop module.

    2 - Crooked Photograph In Lightroom

  2. Under the Histogram panel on the right-hand side of the screen, click on the Crop Overlay Tool (or press R on the keyboard).

    3 - Crop Overlay Tool Lightroom

    When you click on the Crop Overlay Tool an additional set of tools and settings appear on the right-hand side. These tools let us crop and straighten.

    4 - Straighten Tool Lightroom

    Note: In order to maintain the original aspect ratio of an image when you crop it manually, make sure that Original is selected from the cropping Aspect menu and that the aspect ratio is locked.

  3. Click the Straighten tool (it looks like an icon of a tiny spirit level to the left of the word Angle).  

  4. The cursor now changes to crosshairs. On a part of your photograph that you know should be horizontal, click and drag a straight line that follows this straight edge. 

    5- Drag Straighten Tool Lightroom
    In my example, I’m dragging a straight line along the horizon where the sea meets the sky, because it is very obviously crooked. Release the mouse button and your image is rotated.

    6 - Click Done To Apply Straighten

    And that’s it!

  5. If you’re not happy with the result, simply undo the step (Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z) or press the Reset button in the bottom right of the screen and try again.

You can find some more Beginner’s Adobe Lightroom Tutorials here.

I hope you found this Lightroom tutorial useful. Please share it with your friends or other people who might be interested. Thank you:)

Jennifer Farley

Jennifer Farley

Hello!

My name is Jennifer Farley. I'm an Irish author, illustrator, designer, and design educator. I've been teaching and working in the design field for over 20 years. I help people learn Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and Graphic Design.

Photoshop Bootcamp is a growing collection of my Photoshop tutorials and lessons I've written for my students.

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