PS19 process to grab four corners of an image to square up the margins

[duffwilson]

Hi. I need to adjust the perspective on photos I took of pages of a book (in this case, a family scrapbook).  I took the photos carefully with a 50mm lens and tripod and good lighting. But most of the pages are tilted a little off plane, that is, a little left or right or up or down. There's a sample attached. 

When I first started this project, after a LOT of trying, I found a program in Photoshop that would drag four corners of a crop frame to square it all up. But that was four years ago, and I can't find it now. I just re-subscribed to Photoshop for this purpose. The Adobe tech suggestion to use Edit>Perspective Warp doesn't work. Another suggestion to use Filter>Lens Correction doesn't work properly. 

There was a fairly straightforward process to let me grab one corner after another of how I want the photo eventually cropped in a manner that would square it all up and have consistent straight margins. It took about a minute per page but was as perfect as could be.  Can anyone help guide me on this technique?

I have the pages in both CR2 (Canon RAW) and in JPG -- hoping to keep them as high quality as possible and then put them together in JPG or PDF electronic books for family members to share.

Thanks.

[Michael Bullo · Accepted solution]

Have you tried the Perspective Crop Tool? It's hidden underneath the Crop Tool in the Tools panel.

Note: If you are transforming Smart Objects you can also individually move a corner by holding down the Control/Command key.

[duffwilson]

Perfect. Thanks

[Michael Bullo]

Cheers

[Chuck Uebele]

That crop tool is still in PS. Click and hold the crop tool icon in the tool bar and the other crop tool should be under it.

[duffwilson]

Hey Michael (and anyone else who really knows Perspective Crop):

   OK it works great to straighten MOST of these copied scrapbook pages that are out of kilter.  But sometimes -- about a third of the time -- when I Perspective Crop/Enter, the page loses its original appearance.  It typically goes wider. So people in photos look fatter. Not cool. It's not keeping the original ratios.  

   To complicate this, when I Undo Perspective Crop and use Perspective Crop a second time on the same page, it almost always does it correctly with no wider distortions.  I have no idea why.  I've tried to be very attentive to anything I'm doing differently on the second crop and I see nothing.  So, same photo of a scrapbook page, 2/3 of the time it Perspective Crops properly, 1/3 of time it ends up wider than I want and I have to redo it and the second time it's in the correct perspective.

   Appreciate any advice on this.  I'm trying to fix more than 1,000 precious scrapbook page photos.