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Crop & Transform

The Crop & Transform panel handles every geometry-related edit: cropping, rotation, straightening, flipping, perspective correction, and lens-distortion fixes.

Open it with R (the panel tab tooltip reads "Crop"). The crop overlay appears on the canvas with the active aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio presets

Preset Aspect ratio Typical use
Free any No constraint — drag the crop handles freely.
Original image's native ratio Keep the original camera aspect ratio.
1:1 1.000 Square — Instagram, profile pictures.
5:4 1.250 Instagram landscape, 8×10 prints.
4:3 1.333 Traditional monitors, tablets, micro-four-thirds cameras.
3:2 1.500 35mm film, most DSLRs and mirrorless.
16:9 1.778 Widescreen, desktop wallpapers, YouTube thumbnails.
21:9 2.333 Ultrawide monitors, cinematic.
65:24 2.708 Panoramic 35mm wide format.

Click a preset to lock the crop to that ratio. Click again to swap the orientation between landscape and portrait. Click Free to release the lock.

You can also enter custom dimensions in the W and H boxes for a one-off ratio.

Rotation and straightening

Control What it does
Rotation slider Freeform rotation from −45° to +45°, in 0.1° steps. Reset by double-clicking the slider or clicking the reset icon (↺) next to the label.
Straighten / Horizon (canvas) Hold Shift+Drag on the canvas to draw a horizon line. RapidRAW rotates the image so that line becomes level.
Rotate Left ([) Snaps the image counter-clockwise by 90°.
Rotate Right (]) Snaps the image clockwise by 90°.
Flip Horiz Mirrors left/right.
Flip Vert Mirrors top/bottom.

90° rotations are stored as a separate "orientation steps" counter (so they're lossless), independent of the freeform rotation slider.

Composition overlays

Visual guides drawn over the crop area to help you compose. They don't affect the image, they're purely visual aids.

  • None
  • Thirds, Rule of Thirds 3×3 grid.
  • Diagonal Lines
  • Triangle, Golden Triangle.
  • Spiral, Golden Spiral (Fibonacci).
  • Phi Grid, Golden ratio grid.
  • Armature, Classical harmonic division.
Action Shortcut
Cycle through overlays O
Rotate the overlay 90° Shift+O

The overlay rotation applies to the Triangle and Spiral overlays, both of which have a direction.

Transform

The Transform section is inside the Crop & Transform panel, under a collapsible Geometry header. Expand it to access all perspective and geometry controls. Changes preview in real time on the main canvas.

Guided Perspective

Click Drawing Active to start placing guide lines on the canvas. Draw up to four lines along edges that should be straight — vertical building faces, horizontal floors, window frames. RapidRAW calculates the perspective correction automatically from the lines and updates the Perspective sliders to match. Click Drawing Active again to stop drawing.

This is the fastest route to correcting architectural distortion: draw two vertical lines on a building, and converging verticals are fixed in seconds.

Distortion

Slider Range What it does
Amount −100 to +100 Barrel (negative) or pincushion (positive) distortion correction.

Perspective

Slider Range What it does
Vertical −100 to +100 Tilt the image forward or backward — corrects converging verticals (e.g. tall buildings).
Horizontal −100 to +100 Tilt left or right — corrects horizontal perspective.

For architecture and interiors, Vertical is the slider you'll reach for most often — pull it to fix the "falling backward" look of a building photographed from below. Guided Perspective sets both sliders automatically if you prefer.

Transform

Slider Range What it does
Rotate −100 to +100 Additional rotation on top of the main Rotation slider.
Aspect −100 to +100 Stretch the aspect ratio (positive = wider, negative = taller).
Scale 50 to 150 Scale the image up or down within the frame. Default is 100.

Offset

Slider Range What it does
X Axis −100 to +100 Shift horizontally inside the crop.
Y Axis −100 to +100 Shift vertically inside the crop.

Lens correction

Click the Lens Correction chevron to expand the lens correction controls. Two modes are available:

Auto — RapidRAW reads the EXIF data of your file and finds the matching profile from the embedded Lensfun database (open-source, community-maintained). When a lens is detected, it appears highlighted in green. The correction toggles and Amount sliders become active.

Manual — Select a lens yourself using the Choose Saved Lens dropdown (populated from your Settings → My Lenses list) or the Select Manufacturer dropdown to browse the full Lensfun database.

Both modes expose the same three corrections:

Toggle Range What it corrects
Distortion 0 to 200, default 100 Removes barrel/pincushion warp baked into the lens.
Chromatic Aberration 0 to 200, default 100 Color fringing toward the edges of the frame.
Vignetting 0 to 200, default 100 Removes optical vignetting (corner darkening).

Each Amount slider lets you dial back the correction if the full value is too strong.

You can also override the auto-detected lens by typing the maker and model. Each correction has an Amount slider so you can dial it back if the full correction is too strong.

When lens distortion correction is applied, RapidRAW automatically crops the image slightly to hide the black borders and warped edges that distortion removal introduces.

If your lens is not in the Lensfun database, the toggles do nothing. Use the manual sliders in Detail → Chromatic Aberration instead.

New to this? Why not just shoot it level?

You should, but in real life, hand-holding a wide-angle lens makes verticals lean inward, the horizon tilts a degree or two, and lens distortion bends straight lines into gentle curves. The Crop & Transform panel is where you fix all of that. Guided Perspective or the Vertical slider clean up the typical "tourist shot" geometry in seconds.

See also