EditCrop, Rotate, and Transform

Crop, Rotate, and Transform

Composition comes first. Get the framing and geometry wrong and no amount of grading will rescue the photo — a tilted horizon or a crooked crop nags at the viewer no matter how good the color is. That's why Transform is the natural first stop in an edit, and it's the most-used tool in Darkroom for exactly that reason. Open a photo and select Transform toolbar.

The Transform tool in Darkroom with crop, straighten, and grid controls
Crop, straighten, rotate, flip, and perspective correction — all in one tool, applied before tone and color work.

Framing and aspect ratio

Decide where the photo is going before you crop — a square for the feed, a tall frame for a story, a specific ratio for print — so you're not rebuilding the composition later. Alongside a free crop, Darkroom offers aspect-ratio presets for social, analog, print, and cinema. On Mac you can set a custom ratio by typing or nudging the width and height with the arrow keys (hold Option for fine 0.1 steps, Shift for jumps of 10), and tap any portrait preset a second time to flip it to landscape. As you drag, the area being cropped away is shaded so your composition stays the focus.

Straighten, rotate, and flip

The straighten control levels a tilted horizon or a leaning building, and even a one- or two-degree correction makes a photo feel noticeably more polished (on Mac the angle value is editable directly). Use rotate for 90-degree turns or free rotation, and flip horizontally when a composition simply reads better mirrored — no need to rotate-and-flip to fake it.

Perspective correction

Vertical and horizontal perspective correction straightens converging lines — the keystoning you get shooting tall buildings or interiors. It's powerful but easy to overdo: push it too far and edges stretch unnaturally, so apply the minimum that makes the lines feel right, then reassess your crop, since correction changes what's in frame.

A grid to compose against

Two overlay options help you judge the frame: 4×4 for composition guidance, and None for a clean, distraction-free view when you just want to see the image. A reliable order is to straighten first, crop to taste, apply any perspective correction, then finish with rotate or flip. Keep in mind that Frames are applied after the crop in the render pipeline, so crop with the final framing in mind.

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