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I would like to take you through a problem that we all face at one time or another, that of Converging Verticals. We have all come across this problem - you know, you are taking a picture of a church, there isn't much room for you to move back to get the tower in, so what do you do? You tilt the camera upwards to solve the problem. Because of the way the human brain works, it compensates for this tilting, so you think you have got all the building in without converging verticals. It is only when you view the picture, either on the camera's LCD screen, or the print when it comes back from the processors, that you see the problem! Don't worry - you can correct it in Elements. Read on……. Let's take a look at this picture taken at Gloucester Cathedral…..  You can see that the verticals are converging towards the centre, due to the
camera being tilted. If we now superimpose a "Grid" over this picture, you will
see the extent of the problem. Click on "View" and click on the word "Grid"
which is just below the word "Rulers". The window will close and a Grid will be
overlaid on your picture. If this doesn't happen, click on "View" again and
check whether a tick is showing against the word "Grid". Click on Select>All (or hold the Control key down and press "A") to select the whole picture. Now click on Image>Transform>Distort. You will see little square boxes appear at the four corners and midway along each side on the picture. These are called "Handles" and are what you use to distort the image. First of all, we will try to correct the left side of the image. Click on the handle at the top right corner of the image and drag it to the left. You should see the image move (distort) - when the verticals on that side of the image are approximately upright, grab the handle at the top right of the image and drag it to the right until the verticals at the right side of the image are upright. You may have to tweak the distortion a little on both sides, because when you drag the right side, you will slightly undo some of the distortion to the left side, and vice versa. When you are happy with your result, press Enter (or double-click inside the image) and the transformation will be complete. Click on Select>Deselect (or hold the Control key down and press "D") to deselect the image. Check that the verticals line up with the Grid and save the image, calling it a different name to the original. Click on View and click on the word Grid to remove the tick. When the window closes, the grid should be removed from your picture. You will notice that the act of distortion has lost you some of the picture at the bottom, but this is inevitable due to the distortion process. Your image should now look something like this……  You can now do any other manipulation you wish. Roy Phillips |