Crop & Transform

The Crop & Transform panel handles everything about geometry: cropping, rotating, straightening, flipping, fixing perspective and correcting lens distortion.

Open it with R. The crop frame appears on the image. Drag inside the frame to move it, and drag the corners or edges to resize it.

The ↺ button in the panel header resets everything in this panel: crop, rotation, flips, transform and lens correction.

Aspect ratio

Preset	Ratio	Typical use
Free	any	No constraint.
Original	the photo's own ratio	Keep the camera's shape. This is the default for every new photo.
1:1	1.000	Square posts, profile pictures.
5:4	1.250	8×10 prints, Instagram portrait (as 4:5).
4:3	1.333	Micro Four Thirds, phones, tablets.
3:2	1.500	Most DSLR and mirrorless cameras, 6×4 prints.
16:9	1.778	Video frames, wallpapers, YouTube thumbnails.
21:9	2.333	Ultrawide, cinematic look.
65:24	2.708	Panoramic, like the XPan film camera.

Click the active preset again to switch between landscape and portrait. The orientation button in the section header does the same.
When you change the ratio, RapidRAW tries to keep as much of your current crop as possible.

Custom ratios

Click Custom and type a width and height in the W and H fields, for example 7 and 5. Press Enter to apply. Click the save icon next to the fields to keep the ratio as a preset tile. Saved ratios appear next to the built-in ones and can be removed with the × that shows on hover.

Rotation

The Rotation slider rotates the image from −45° to +45° in 0.1° steps. The crop frame automatically shrinks so no empty corners show. While you drag the slider, a fine grid appears to help you line things up.

Three buttons sit next to the slider:

Button	Shortcut	What it does
Straighten Tool (ruler)	`S`	Draw a line along something that should be level or upright, such as a horizon or a wall. The image rotates to match. Works for horizontal and vertical lines, and switches itself off after one line.
Auto Straighten	`Shift+S`	Finds straight lines in the photo and levels it automatically. Only corrections up to 10° are applied. If no usable lines are found you get a short message.
Reset Fine Rotation (↺)		Sets the slider back to 0°.

S and Shift+S also work from other panels: they switch to Crop first.

Quick straighten from any panel: outside the Crop panel, hold Shift and drag a line on the image. The photo is straightened along that line without leaving the panel you are in.

Auto Straighten also works on many photos at once: select them in the library, right-click and choose Productivity → Auto Straighten.

Orientation

Button	Shortcut	What it does
Rotate Left	`[`	Turns the photo 90° counter-clockwise.
Rotate Right	`]`	Turns it 90° clockwise.
Flip Horiz		Mirrors left and right.
Flip Vert		Mirrors top and bottom.

A 90° turn also resets the fine rotation and swaps the crop between landscape and portrait. [ and ] also work in the library on the selected photo.

Composition overlays

Guides drawn over the crop area while the Crop panel is open. They are not part of the photo.

Overlay	What it shows
None	Nothing.
Thirds (default)	Rule of thirds, 3×3 grid.
Diagonal Lines	Diagonals from the corners.
Triangle	Golden triangle.
Spiral	Golden (Fibonacci) spiral.
Phi Grid	Like thirds, but using the golden ratio.
Armature	The classic 14-line armature of the rectangle.
Center	Center cross.

Action	How
Cycle overlays	`O`, or the grid icon in the Aspect Ratio header.
Rotate the overlay	`Shift+O`. Only Triangle and Spiral change.

Transform (Geometry)

Click Geometry to expand the transform tools. Right-click it to reset only this part.

Guided Perspective

The easiest way to fix converging lines in architecture.

Click Guided Perspective. The button now says Drawing Active.
Draw lines on the image along edges that should be straight up or level: the sides of a building, a door frame, a floor line.
You can draw up to two vertical and two horizontal lines. Each line must be within about 35° of vertical or horizontal.
The correction is applied as soon as you have two lines. Drag a line's end points to fine-tune it.
Click the button again (it shows Cancel on hover) to stop drawing.

Your lines are listed as "Active Guide Lines n / 4", each with a delete button. The image is automatically cropped to hide the empty areas the correction creates. Guided Perspective is separate from the sliders below, so you can still fine-tune with them.

Example: for a tall building shot from street level, draw one line along the left edge and one along the right edge of the building. The walls become parallel.

Guided Perspective with two vertical guide lines drawn along the edges of a hotel building, and the list of active guide lines in the panel — Two vertical guides along the hotel walls. The dashed frame shows the automatic crop.

Sliders

Group	Slider	Range	Default	What it does
Distortion	Amount	−100 to +100	0	Corrects barrel or pincushion distortion by hand.
Perspective	Vertical	−100 to +100	0	Tilts the image forward or back. Fixes buildings that "fall backwards".
Perspective	Horizontal	−100 to +100	0	Corrects a photo taken at an angle to a wall.
Transform	Rotate	−45° to +45°	0	Extra rotation, in 0.1° steps.
Transform	Aspect	−100 to +100	0	Stretches the image horizontally or vertically. Useful after strong perspective correction, when buildings look squat.
Transform	Scale	50 to 150	100	Zooms the image inside the frame.
Offset	X Axis	−100 to +100	0	Moves the image sideways.
Offset	Y Axis	−100 to +100	0	Moves the image up or down.

Lens Correction

Click Lens Correction to expand it. Corrections use the open-source Lensfun database.

There are two modes:

Manual (default). Pick a lens yourself. Choose Saved Lens lists the lenses you added under Settings → My Lenses. Otherwise choose a manufacturer in Select Manufacturer and then the lens in Select Lens Model. You can type in the dropdowns to filter.
Auto. RapidRAW reads the camera and lens from the photo's metadata and finds the profile. A green line shows the lens it found. A red "Lens profile not found" means there is no profile for that lens.

Three corrections are available. Each has a switch and an Amount slider from 0 to 200 (100 is the full correction from the profile):

Correction	What it fixes
Distortion	Bent straight lines (barrel or pincushion).
Chromatic Aberration	Color fringes along edges toward the corners.
Vignetting	Darker corners caused by the lens.

A correction is greyed out when the profile has no data for it. When distortion is corrected, the image is scaled a little so the bent edges are hidden.

To apply automatic lens correction to many photos, select them in the library, right-click and choose Productivity → Auto Lens Correction.

If your lens is missing, the profile has to be added to Lensfun. Until then you can use the manual Distortion slider above and Details → Chromatic Aberration.

Crop shortcuts on the canvas

These work in any panel, not only in Crop:

Gesture	What it does
`Ctrl` + mouse wheel (`Cmd` on macOS)	Makes the crop tighter or wider around the mouse pointer. A quick way to crop in without opening the panel.
`Ctrl` + drag	Moves the crop around in the image.
`Ctrl` + double-click	Resets crop, rotation and aspect ratio.
`Shift` + drag (outside Crop)	Straightens along the line you draw.

Holding Ctrl (Cmd) while dragging a crop handle resizes the crop from its center.

The split and side-by-side before/after views are turned off while the Crop panel is open.

New to this? Why not just shoot it level?

You should try, but in real life the horizon tilts a degree or two, wide-angle lenses make buildings lean inward, and lenses bend straight lines. This panel fixes all of that afterwards. For a typical travel shot: press Shift+S for Auto Straighten, then use Guided Perspective on any building.