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Straighten & Crop Tools #1
stephen justice's picture
by stephen justice
November 13, 2011 - 5:13am

Most of my subjects are race cars so I use the straighten tool followed by the crop tool. Suddenly, Aperture is tilting the image after I have finished straightening the image when I click on the crop tool icon. How can I get Aperture to leave the image straight again?

stephen r justice

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
November 13, 2011 - 5:28am

When you straighten an image, Aperture rotates the image and applies an automatic crop so that all the edges remain square to the display. When you then select the crop tool, Aperture shows the complete image un-cropped and provides the manual crop box inside for your adjustments. To me this is exactly what it is supposed to do. Is this not happening for you?

Thomas

stephen justice's picture
by stephen justice
November 13, 2011 - 5:53am

On the monitor, the image is tilted left or right to the degree that I straightened it. It does not show up square in relation to the screen. Did I accidentally change my crop presets. What should my crop settings be–this just started today

stephen r justice

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
November 13, 2011 - 6:13am

Stephen,

Does your screen look like this: http://twitpic.com/7dkciq

This is what it looks like after straightening and then crop. Note that for this example I purposely did a bad job of straightening just to show the effect.

Thomas

stephen justice's picture
by stephen justice
November 13, 2011 - 6:18am

To reiterate the problem: after using the straighten tool, the uncropped image, instead of being straight in the display, is angled to the left or right to the degree which I straightened the image. This has never happened before–is the bug in the straighten tool or the crop tool. I have Aperture version 3.2.1

stephen r justice

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
November 13, 2011 - 6:22am

Stephen,

You didn’t answer my question. If Aperture is doing what I showed in that screen capture, then what you are seeing is your image without the automatic crop that happens when you straighten an image. Just do your manual crop and all should be fine.

I suppose it’s acting differently than before but whether it was Apple’s intention or not I don’t know. I don’t really see it as a problem though.

Thomas

stephen justice's picture
by stephen justice
November 13, 2011 - 8:01am

Yes, my images look like twit pic.com/7dkciq. Does this mean no “automatic” crop when I straighten an image from now on? Will Apple correct this or is this the way things will be for? What used to be a simple two step path now gets more complicated and time-consuming

stephen r justice

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
November 13, 2011 - 8:22am

Sorry Stephen,

I guess I don’t understand why this is a problem. If you straighten an image, you get the automatic crop. If you then select the crop command you’re going to do a manual crop anyway so the automatic crop doesn’t matter. What is complicated and time-consuming?

If you select the crop command, you see the full rotated image. If you just quit the crop command without doing anything (press A), the automatic crop turns back on.

Thomas

stephen justice's picture
by stephen justice
November 13, 2011 - 11:00am

Ok, let me ask this…..since the tilted images never showed up before today, is this an effect of the upgrade to 3.2.1 or what? I have never had to deal with tilted images (after straightening) until today. Before today, it was just straighten (automatic crop), hit crop tool and refine–now it is different. I was just concerned I changed a setting without knowing it.

stephen r justice

Steve Jackson's picture
by Steve Jackson
November 13, 2011 - 1:31pm

Stephen

If you’re seeing your image as per Thomas’ twitpic.com/7dkciq example, press ‘A’ on the keyboard to move out of crop mode. You should now see only the cropped image.

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
November 13, 2011 - 7:59pm

All,

The behavior of crop + rotate has evolved over time, and I for one would say that Apple has finally gotten it right. When you rotate an image, it has to be cropped or else you’d have empty edges. When you open the crop tool on a rotate image, it’s very handy to see the entire image, so you can make a decision to adjust your rotation if you want to “recover” something that’s already been cropped out.

The image, once rotated, stays rotated until you re-select the rotate tool. What’s changed is that you now very clearly see what data you have to work with. Once you’ve added both adjustments, as you toggle between crop (c) and straighten (g) the tool changes but the display remains the same, allowing you to always see the entire photograph.

@PhotoJoseph
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Matteo Favi's picture
by Matteo Favi
November 13, 2011 - 9:01pm

Hi everybody!

I come into Aperture from years of work with Lightroom, and frankly I so desperatly miss adobe’s crop tool, because it can do crop AND straighen at the same time, which is absolutely perfect..is there any setting or tool/plugin to set this feature also in Aperture??
Thanks in advance

Matteo

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
November 13, 2011 - 10:10pm

Matteo,

Welcome to Aperture! The best way to crop/straighten “together” is to toggle between the Crop and Rotate tools with the keyboard shortcuts C and G. It may not be exactly the same but I think you’ll find it works just fine.

@PhotoJoseph
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Steve Jackson's picture
by Steve Jackson
November 15, 2011 - 8:16pm

It’s interesting you say “…When you rotate an image, it has to be cropped or else you’d have empty edges…” Joseph.

Pre iMac and A3, I used ACDsee Pro on Windows. One feature I miss is the option to select EITHER “crop straightened image” OR “preserve straighted image” when rotating …

Of course 99% of the time, I want to preserve straight edges, and so the default A3 approach is the way to go. Sometimes though, for an ‘arty’ approach, or because I ‘have to’ straighten, but there’s not enough image in the image (the crop will chop a head off for example), I’m happy to have crooked sides, with say a black background. So now, I have to kick the image out to Photoshop Express to do this, as A3 cannot.

Just another perspective.

Steve

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
November 18, 2011 - 9:28pm

Fair enough Steve… options are never a bad thing ;-)

@PhotoJoseph
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Dan Donovan's picture
by Dan Donovan
January 4, 2012 - 9:53am

Have to say that I like the old way of Straightening and Cropping in Aperture better. When I Straightened an image previously, the resulting cropped area disappeared and cropping from there was easy. I liked this so much better than Photoshop! Now after Straightening, the cropping tool sometimes gets stuck due to all of the image being visible. Just wish we had the option to go back to the old way, which was smooth and fast for me.

HMCA's picture
by HMCA
March 15, 2012 - 11:45pm

I have also found this new way of straightening/cropping very annoying! Is there a way to revert to the old way….before the update? I am so sorry that I ever downloaded this update. Look forward to your reply.

Thanks,
Helen

HMCA
Aperture 3..5.1, PE11, PSCC for photographers : ) , NIK, Topaz and OnOne Plug-ins

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 16, 2012 - 12:25am

Helen,

No way to turn it off that I’m aware of.

What is it you find annoying? I find the combination of using keys c (Crop) g (straiGhten) and a (Arrow) very smooth and quick. I can get my image how I want it, and see exactly what’s happening, all at once.

@PhotoJoseph
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PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
January 5, 2012 - 8:24am

Dan,

Are you using the ‘a’ key to select the arrow (the “select selection tool”)? That’s the fastest way to get out of Crop, Rotate, or Crop/Rotate combo.

@PhotoJoseph
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HMCA's picture
by HMCA
March 16, 2012 - 4:32am

Joseph,

Thank you for your quick reply! Of course now I can’t reproduce the problem….which I guess is a good thing! Most frustrating was that after straightening the crop handles would get stuck and not pull out as expected….plus I much prefer working with my straightened version when I go to crop. I haven’t been using the keyboard shortcuts so will give that a try and see if it makes things easier. Soooo until I encounter the issue again, I guess I’m good for now.

Thanks,
Helen

HMCA
Aperture 3..5.1, PE11, PSCC for photographers : ) , NIK, Topaz and OnOne Plug-ins

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
March 16, 2012 - 4:54am

Helen,

Not sure about the stuck crop handles; perhaps you had the straighten tool selected and tried grabbing the crop handles? Also, once you’ve straightened, the image will NOT un-straighten for the crop, so I’m really not sure what you were seeing.

Anyway, it’s working now, and that’s what matters ;-)

@PhotoJoseph
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Kenneth Lim's picture
by Kenneth Lim
November 7, 2012 - 12:53am

I’m bumping this to see if anyone has figured out a way to get the old straightening/cropping so that the crop handles don’t get “stuck”.

Definitely the most annoying change of the most recent Aperture updates.

Or in absence of that, perhaps a suggestion for an efficient method to contact developers in hopes they’ll listen?

PhotoJoseph's picture
by PhotoJoseph
November 7, 2012 - 3:35am

Kenneth,

I thought the issue was resolved before by using a combination of the g key for straighten and c key for crop… can you explain just what it is you’re seeing and what you expect/want to see happen?

@PhotoJoseph
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Glen Lam's picture
by Glen Lam
March 5, 2013 - 11:52pm

Learning about the ‘a’ keyboard shortcut here is awesome! This whole time, I thought I had to manually close the crop tool box to get out of the crop/rotate mode. Thank you for mentioning it!

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