How-to

How to straighten crooked scanned photos

Tilted scans are the most common annoyance of digitizing a collection — and the easiest to fix. You don't need to re-scan anything; a small rotation sets a crooked photo level.

Why scans come out crooked

Prints rarely land perfectly square on a scanner's glass, and photos taped into an album were often mounted at a slight angle to begin with. Either way the tilt is baked into the scan. The fix is the same: a small rotation and a clean re-crop.

The steps

1. Find a line that should be straight

   Look for a reference that ought to be level or vertical — a horizon, a tabletop, a wall, a door frame. That line tells you exactly how far the photo is tilted.

2. Rotate by a degree or two

   Most photos are only off by a small angle. Nudge a straightening slider until your reference line sits true. Resist over-correcting — level, not artfully re-angled.

3. Crop back to a clean rectangle

   Rotating an image leaves slanted edges and blank corners. Crop in slightly so the photo is a clean rectangle again. A little of the border is a fair trade for a straight picture.

4. Do the whole batch in one place

   If a whole sheet came out tilted, straighten as you crop rather than opening each file separately. CapCrop puts straightening on a slider right beside the crop, so leveling a batch is part of the same pass — no round trips through a separate editor.