Looks like its back to the drawing board and a visible copyright icon on my flickr photostream.
The crop/straighten panel (shown above) is then displayed and it has a number of tools to rotate the image. I’m using the ruler called straighten. Using it you first select one point, say on the horizon, click and then you stretch out desired the desired new horizon, and click on a second point on the horizon. The photo is then adjusted on screen and you set where the automatic cropping is also displayed (outside this the triangular salvages are still displayed but subdued). The two icons with the small rectangle and curved rotation arrows can be used to rotate the photo through 90° to right or left (ie correct for the camera held at 90°). The sliders also rotates the photo but only by a limited amount. Like the original picasa straightener moving to the right is a clockwise rotation and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt.
I'm actually falling back on the way an artist might be expected to learn to sketch. Some of that instruction might be how to hold the pencil but most of the time will be dedicated to seeing the subject and making the appropriate marks on the page, sometimes using a HB pencil sometimes sometimes much softer like a 4B or charcoal and other times maybe coloured like a watercolour wash or crayons. To this end I began a series of simple post where I described the workspace available in common software (specifically software I have used). This was a lot like opening the page of your sketch book or perhaps a setting up a ready primed canvas and getting out your pencils, pens and/or paints. However once you are familiar with the workspace it is time to find out what tools are available and what they can do.
What I am going to tackle next is an exploration of tool types, by tool type. Not trying to cover everything but definitely those which I consider the important photo editing tools. This is somewhat like using different media in the sketching but I will be focussing on specific tasks that most photographers and/o artists will commonly encounter. I have picked a dozen common tasks and the tools to do them and divided these into three groupsBasic Tools | Flourish Tools | Special Tasks |
| White Balance | Sharpening/Smoothing | Noise Reduction |
| Exposures | Selective Refinements | Red Eye Reduction |
| Tonal Enhancement | Layers, Masks, Gradients | Lens Corrections |
| Straighten | Filters, Presets | |
| Crop |
There are dozens of expensive books that follow elaborate workflows but I don't think you can beat learning how to use one tool at a time on a task that is important to creating/enhancing your own image.Once you know the way in which you want to use the tools and you find yourself doing the same tasks time and time again, then this is the time to considered work flow, But it should be something that suits you and enhances your creativity.
I find that AfterShot Pro has a really wonderful straightening tool, it is the small tilted picture icon at the bottom left of the main image display. The tool displays a bold arrow, clicking and holding the mouse will then select this point as an anchor and as you move the mouse away from this point a circular target style image opens up which has a horizontal and vertical grid markings (useful in aligning both vertical and horizontal items) Movement of the mouse can rotate this target circle. As you move away from the target a bold line is draw on one of the prime directions (right. left, up or down) closest you you movement. If you move the mouse outside a certain size (ie the circle almost fills the shortest axis of your image), the circle no longer expands but the bold reference line continues as you drag the mouse further. In the example above I have anchored the first point on the horizon on the left and side and draw out my desired horizontal to the horizon on the right hand side. Releasing the mouse rotates the image to use this new horizontal.
Unlike most other straighten tools, the one in AfterShot Pro does not automatically crop your image. So you are left with triangular salvages (shown in grey On the left) along the sides. The crop tool is the two overlapping L shapes with a tiny scalpel icon, its is to the left beside the straighten icon. Clicking on it displays a small dialogue box, in the upper right hand corner is a button labelled fit, clicking on this will then automatically fits your rotated photo into the largest rectangle that it can generate without displaying the salvages, (ie it trims off some of the edges or your image). This basically matches the automatic cropping of other packages. However when you rotate the image the aspect ratio of that fill rectangle can vary, so being able to crop to a defined ratio instead of the best fit could be desirable in many situations. 
Finally for all the “pixel peepers” and/or folk with a micrometre, here is my straighten version of my contre-jour seascape
Artist have know about the golden hour(s) long before photography was developed. They realised that the intensity (and purity) of light transformed for a short period each day. Whilst is wasn’t until the British water colourists and later the French impressionist really focussed on painting en plein air, that the power of this magical lighting became recognized, and popular with the general public.
Comparing this with the photograph (below) taken immediately before the one of my sketch (on the left) my sketch might look pale and lack detail, but it definitely gives me a stronger sense of the moment, the descending cool and echo of bird calls. I also didn’t have a telephoto lens at hand so the sketch is just a tiny part of what I photographed in the failing light.
I’m very unlikely to formally paint this image or sell a photograph of it. However in the scheme of things, understanding light and knowing what I am actually seeing is more important. I feel the sketch, even though it just a couple colour washes, is likely to help better recall the scene. More importantly it highlights that we should not always assume a photograph straight from the camera is always the perfect record of what we saw.
So I decided to run a disk recovery utility but it had been a long time since I had had to used such a utility and it was nowhere to be found on my computer or useful photo tools USB key. Also I had forgotten the name (which is recuva, remember that name) so I had to do a little search back into my blog and then check on-line, recuva still has a free downloadable version. Just 4mb, so I had it downloaded and recovered the files in just a few minutes. The two things that are important to note are. Firstly recover the files to a different disk (not the SD card). Second Recuva will not see the RAW files if you just ask to recover photos (it will however recover the .jpeg files). So it is important to recover all files. So I will make sure I keep an up to date copy of recuva on my useful photo utility toolkit
Returning to the Sand Goddess Theme pic.twitter.com/ekVP6D6j3j
— AP@imageo (@APimageo) March 2, 2015
I am getting more and more convinced that it is truly important to ensure that the first place to post my ideas and photos is a place of my own (or controlled by me) this is the POSSE approach. The down side is very few folk actually look at my places (perhaps with the exception of this blog), The compromise, which is what POSSE is all about, is to syndicated that post elsewhere after you have posted on your own place. For example I post the above photo on Known and then syndicate the image (above) in Twitter. This establishes a precedence (and thus “legal” ownership of the intellectual property via publicly searchable publication and time stamps) and also very importantly clearly established provenance. 
Stephen Wiltshire has an amazing talent, he can sketch incredibly detailed images from memory.
Ontop of a small amount of hot water (not boiling) "float" a double espresso shot.
