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Renanoon
Renanoon
Participant
May 21, 2026
Open for Voting

P: Scalable horizon alignment.

  • May 21, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 34 views

A feature Lightroom desperately needs is scalable horizon alignment.

Currently, the horizon straighten tool only rotates the image, forcing unnecessary crop loss. A much better workflow would be a “scale + straighten” adjustment, where Lightroom automatically scales the image slightly while correcting the horizon — similar to how video stabilization tools work.

This would be extremely useful for wedding, event and fast-paced photography where framing consistency matters across large batches of images.

Suggested improvements:

  • Horizon straighten with automatic scale compensation

  • Batch horizon matching between selected photos

  • Reference-based alignment (using a previous image as reference)

  • AI-assisted consistent framing for sequences

This would save photographers a huge amount of time and preserve composition quality.

    1 reply

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 21, 2026

    I’m not sure I understand the advantage of scaling. Video needs to be scaled, because video has a fixed pixel size (for example 1920 x 1080 pixels for FullHD). Pictures do not have a mandatory pixel size, so why would scaling be preferable over cropping? In both cases you lose some edge pixels, which is inevitable because images are rectangles. The only way to straighten a horizon while not losing any pixels at all would be by warping the entire image, not by scaling it. Is that what you suggest? 
     

    Cropping keeps the image quality the same, you’ll only get a slightly smaller image. Scaling degrades the image quality slightly, so unless there is a specific reason to keep all images the exact same pixel size, I would think cropping is more logical than scaling for images.
     

    By the way; the Transformation panel already offers scaling.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    Renanoon
    RenanoonAuthor
    Participant
    May 21, 2026

    want to scale many images horizontally at the same time. you cant do it on Lightroom.

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 21, 2026

    Yes, you can. Scaling is normally bidirectional, and can be done in batch by using the Scale slider in the Transform panel with ‘Auto Sync’ enabled. Or do you mean only scale them horizontally (but not vertically)? That can be done by changing the aspect ratio using the crop tool, or by stretching the image. The latter can be done in the Transform panel with the Aspect Ratio slider, and again also in batch the same way. It distorts the image however, so in most cases that would be undesirable (especially in wedding pictures, because all people would become fatter!).

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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