I know Photolab has an automatic horizon correction option. In my experience it’s hit or miss. Not necessarily better or worse than other tools, but still, it’s not dependable.
I believe there are many images where the horizontal or preferably vertical line on with to align the image isn’t clear enough.
When auto horizon fails, I can “draw” the straight line over top of a horizon or “vertical” and PL will line up the image based on the line I draw.
It would be GREAT if I could instead double click on (or very near) the horizon line, and have photolab “find” the vertical that I’m saying should be vertical. It can already find verticals because it can do so in the whole image. I simply want to identify where the vertical is that should be used, in case PL can’t locate a good one, or locates the wrong one…
If I click and drag I get the same behavior as I get now. If I double click, PL should find the nearest straight line, and draw the horizon line it found just as if I clicked and dragged, and then rotate the image. I could straighten pictures MUCH faster with this capability.
And for those who want to say “it’s easy enough” or "take more care shooting straight in camera, please. save it…
Agreed. Often enough, there is no horizon in my photos, but verticals are visible enough, at least for a human brain. As far as I’ve seen so far - and all that follows is guessing - DPL tries to adjust horizontal lines in landscape oriented images and verticals in portrait orientation. If it e.g. checked for verticals in landscape orientation, success rate could be improved imo.
I often find that if I’m manually adjusting the perspective, attending to vertical lines at the centre of the image is important and I can then decide how much keystone correction to apply if any.
Thus I need a centre vertical guidline and I will repeat my ongoing request for a grid that includes it. Defining grid size by percentage plus subdivisions would be best e.g. 25% with 4 subdivisions would give a 16x16 grid.
A ‘make this line vertical’ option would be useful though.
The workaround is simple: Click the ReShape button and you will see a 4x4 grid display by default. This allows you to easily spot which vertical of your subject passes through the center of the image. Then just deactivate ReShape…
When you use the “horizon” tool you can always click on the shortcut letter “G” to display a grid that you can define in the “settings” menu , size and colors