Straightening Tilting Horizon Lines with Your Nikon D3400

If you have a knack for shooting with your Nikon D3400 camera misaligned with respect to the horizon, photos like the one on the left often wind up crooked. Luckily, the Retouch menu offers a Straighten tool that can rotate tilting horizons back to the proper angle, as shown on the right.

After you choose the Straighten filter from the Retouch menu, as shown on the left in the following figure, you see a screen similar to the one on the right, with a grid superimposed on your photo to serve as an alignment aid. Press the Multi Selector right to rotate the picture clockwise; press left to rotate counterclockwise. Each press spins the picture by about 0.25 degrees. You can achieve a maximum rotation of 5 degrees. Press OK to create the straightened copy.

To achieve this rotation magic, the camera must crop your image and enlarge the remaining area — that's why the After photo contains slightly less subject matter than the original. (The same cropping occurs if you make this kind of change in a photo editor.) The camera updates the display as you rotate the photo so that you can get an idea of how much of the original scene may be lost.