Picture Rotation?

After downloading pictures from my DL2 to the PC, I often want to rotate the portrait ones in windows (right click etc) to show the pictures as a slideshow just after taking them. This is what the problem is: some of the pictures just refuse to rotate. It says the file is open somewhere else - which I'm pretty sure its not. I know there is a multiple file process feature in photoshop but I can't see a multiple rotate option. Any ideas as to why I may be having this problem? Thanks

Rule number one : don't use Windows Explorer (or is it Exploder )

Hop over to www.irfanview.com and download yourself the free image viewer/manipulation software. It'll give nice slideshows and allows on-the-fly rotation - or permanent JPG lossless rotation too

Hope that helps!
Matt

Hello Mr. Ist,

If you have just had a particular file open in Photoshop you may get these Windoze errors when you try to rename/delete/change it in some way in Explorer, as Photoshop seems to "hang on" to files for a while after you've closed them, making them seem to the operating system as though they're open when they're not. ( Of course I'm trying to replicate this just now - which has annoyed me too in the past - and it's behaving perfectly...grr.

Anyway, there's a free app called Process Explorer by Sysinternals.com which you can use to find and close apps/file handles that you know shouldn't be open.

To rotate multiple files at once in the PS browser use the same file select methods as in Windows Explorer (ie Ctrl-click for discontinuous selection, Shift-click for continuous selection) then right click for the menu.

hth,

smithy.

Some methods of rotation actually resample fairly badly, so I tend to rotate only as needed in Photoshop.

Good point. I don't think that rotating thumbnails in the PS browser resamples the actual file though, as it doesn't affect its orientation on opening, so I would assume that's safe to do?

If you have jpegs you want to rotate use Irfanview - it is a lossless rotation. PS isn't.

Irfanview's lossless rotation is available as one of the plug-ins - it's not in the basic package. Pressing L or R gives you lossy rotation. Pressing Shift-J is lossless.

G

Thankx for the help everyone - I already had irfanview but didn't know about the lossless rotation feature. Definitely worth knowing about. I hadn't thought that windows 'exploder!' might reduce the image quality whilst rotating.

for interest, does anyone know if the in-camera picture rotation feature is lossless or not?

I don't know about that - someone might - but as a general principle I avoid any processing in camera.

Except, that is, for favouring the use of JPEG which involves some processing of its own.

I think it almost certainly will be lossless.

G

Normally cameras only mark the EXIF data in the JPG as "please rotate". When you do an ad-hoc rotate on the LCD it's not usually affecting the stored JPG, so in a sense it's lossless.
Matt