Crop and straighten a photo quickly without Photoshop

For quick crops and straightening you do not need Photoshop. Disk Sort by Zaweba has a small editor built into its large picture view: press E, crop with an aspect preset or a ratio of your own, drag the slider to straighten, and nudge brightness, contrast and warmth. The original photo is never modified, and Ctrl+E exports a new file with your edits applied.

That suits the jobs most people actually have. A tilted horizon, a stranger at the edge of the frame or a picture that needs to fit a 5 by 7 frame are all a minute's work.

Getting into the editor

Open the folder in the FILES tab and press Enter or Ctrl+3 to see one picture at a time. Move to the photo you want and press E. The editor works on the picture you are looking at, so there is nothing to open or import.

Disk Sort handles JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, GIF, BMP and TIFF, and shows photos the right way up from their EXIF details, so a phone picture taken on its side arrives upright.

Cropping and straightening

Choose an aspect preset for the crop or type a custom ratio such as 5:7. The Portrait shape toggle flips the ratio between landscape and portrait, which saves working out whether you meant 5:7 or 7:5. Drag the crop to frame the part of the picture you want.

To straighten, drag the straighten slider until the horizon or a doorway looks level. Double-click the slider to return it to 0. If the whole picture needs a quarter turn, [ and ] turn it left or right.

Straighten first, then crop. Turning a picture leaves corners to trim, and setting the crop after straightening lets you frame what is left.

Light and colour

Three sliders cover the common fixes. Brightness lifts or darkens the picture, Contrast adds or reduces punch, and Warmth moves the colour towards orange or blue, which helps with indoor shots that came out too yellow. Auto-level is there when you want the app to set a starting point, and the sliders still work after it.

Small moves are usually enough. If you have pushed a picture too far, Reset to original clears every edit and you can start again.

Why your original is safe

Edits are stored beside the photo rather than written into it. Close the editor and come back later, and your crop and sliders are still there to change. The camera's file stays exactly as it was.

When you want a finished copy, tag the photos you have edited (or select them) and press Ctrl+E. Disk Sort exports them as new files with the edits applied, and the originals are not changed. That makes it easy to send a cropped copy to a printer or a friend and keep the full frame for yourself.

When you need more

The editor is meant for quick fixes while you sort, not for retouching. For layers, cloning or detailed work, Open with on the right-click menu lists installed Zaweba apps that edit the file, such as Paint by Zaweba, followed by apps that view it and the Windows default program.

Disk Sort by Zaweba is free and offline. For most holiday photos, cropping, straightening and a touch of warmth in the same window where you picked your keepers is all the editing they need.