Object rotation wizard

[tom95521]

Like Photoshop and many other image editors it would be nice if we could click and drag a line between 2 points (vertical or horizontal) on image or video object to auto rotate image. I know some people think ALL image adjustments should be made outside of PTE but for beginners who just want to import some photos and create a slideshow a simple image rotate would help. The existing method of manual rotation using the alignment grid is not as accurate or fast as click and drag a straight line. Auto zoom to fill in rotated background would be nice too.

Thanks,

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Could you possibly explain a bit more. What is the purpose for the image rotate? Are you trying to correct for a horizon mistake? The rotate right now is precise to the nearest 1/1000th of a degree, I doubt if more "accuracy" is feasible???

Do you mean draw a line from point A to point B and have the program set that line and the image it's drawn on to 180" or 90" image as "horizontal" or "vertical" to compensate for out of horizontal or vertical capture? Sorry, I'm just not 100% clear on what the purpose is...

Best regards,

Lin

[tom95521]

Hi Lin,

I'm sure you have used the Photoshop method for variable rotation using click and drag to create a reference horizon?

I may be wrong but I think the click and drag between 2 distant points on the image (to establish either perfect horizontal or vertical) is faster and more accurate that manually using the rotate with grid option (which is awkward to fine control rotation even with keyboard). I find the "Photoshop" method intuitive for fine rotation down to .001 degree. The click and drag function already exists in Pixbuilder Studio so the source code could probably be added to PTE without much trouble.

An even more advanced option would include 2 almost parallel lines and the software adjust the image so that they are exactly parallel (by auto adjusting the 3D X/Y axis).

Thanks,

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Yes, I was just trying to sort out exactly what you wanted to do. I have never used the grid feature myself for correcting horizontal or vertical orientation on a photo even though that's one of the two ways possible with Photoshop. Drawing a line for example, across the top of a roof structure then the Photoshop "rotate canvas, arbitrary" gives a pretty good quick and easy way to make that line parallel to the horizon. I'm assuming that was what you were referring to.

Of course the accuracy is no more precise than the line drawn by the user but it's certainly good enough to approximate horizontal (or vertical). How precise sort of depends on the visual acuity and manual dexterity of the hand holding the mouse or pointing device. I agree that the slider in PTE is a pain to use because the motion is way too abrupt, at least for the way most have their mouse set up. I usually do my horizon corrections in my cameras so rarely have to deal with correcting a photo in PTE but I can see the utility of a control for quick straightening without manually entering values. In PTE I almost never us the slider or enter the numeric values but rather just grab the rotate point and do it visually with the mouse. I always work with a much smaller than full screen so that the entire bounding rectangle is visible at all times.

There are lots of controls which could be useful in PixBuilder for image editing, but then one has to decide where to draw the line on image editing versus other features more germane to slideshow presentation. It's not easy sometimes deciding what is essential and what is excess...

Best regards,

Lin