The original photograph.

Preparing a photo for an on-line aircraft photo database is not difficult, although it does help if one has a good image to start with.

My thanks to my friend Stephen Lane for providing me with the inspiration and the image for this tutorial.

1. Level
Select VIEW, then GRID. This should bring up a grid onto the picture.
You may wish to have the TOOLS palate on the screen. That can be selected by WINDOW, TOOLS.
I prefer not to have this but use the short-cut keys in brackets.
Select the ZOOM TOOL (magnifying glass) or Z.
Fortunately Inverness is blessed with lighting towers, take the left hand tower, left click and hold to draw out a box a bit larger than the tower.

Select IMAGE, ROTATE, CUSTOM. A pop-up box will appear select a value to the right. It is a matter or trial and error. If the rotate does not work use the STEP BACKWARD arrow, which may be under the work WINDOW to undo the rotation and preserve image quality. With me 1.25 RIGHT seemed to work best.

Select VIEW, FIT TO SCREEN (Ctrl + O) to fit the entire picture onto the screen and VIEW, GRID to remove the grid.

2. Crop

Select the CROP TOOL (C)

I short cut that I use all the time is to have the numbers 1024 and 711 into the WIDTH boxes, the numbers 3 and 2 may also work. Following the crop the image will be automatically re-sized to my desired submission size of 1024x711 pixels. If that does not work for you the resize will be covered in the next stage.

Otherwise, select the CROP TOOL (or press the keyboard key C) Starting at the upper left hand corner of the picture drag out the crop box to cover the entire image. Then placing the cursor on the bottom right hand box of the dashed crop box, it will change to a double headed arrow, then holding the SHIFT key down drag the crop box inward to the desired position.

Drag out the box with a bit fore and aft. I prefer to have the image slightly lower than mid-frame, the cross is dead centre on the windows, mine is on the engine exhaust. DOUBLE LEFT CLICK in the box and the image will be cropped to the new size.

This should give us our levelled and cropped image

Stage 2 - Levels and re-size