Improving your Rug Photographs using Photoshop

The typical rug photograph is not square. With some adjustments using Photoshop, you can really improve the photograph. I don’t do this procedure every day so I usually have to review the steps. The tutorial by Larry Boch is the simplest and most visual I have found on the internet. The basic steps are:

1. Turn on the grid system with View>Show>Grid
2. Select the Ruler tool (it is with the eyedropper)
3. Find a line as close as possible to the center of the image and draw along it with the Ruler Tool.
4. Image>Image Rotation>Arbitrary and the necessary amount and direction will come up automatically. Click OK.
5. Select>All
6. Edit>Transform>Distort.
7. Now move the handles up, down, left and right as necessary to line the image up with the grid.
8. Double click or press Enter to seal in your adjustments.

Photoshop is an expensive piece of software. I use an older version, CS4. The tutorial linked to above appears to use an even older version. Since you will only need to this once for each rug you hook, purchasing the software might not make sense. There are several on line websites that will do this for you, just be sure to read the terms and conditions, the small type. You may be giving away rights to your image.