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I usually rotate all my jpg photos (using Windows Photo Viewer) after removing them from my camera's card. Is this correct? Am I losing quality for rotating them? Should I just leave them as they are and later incorporate the rotation as another retouch step - at a post-processing software like, for instance, Lightroom?

Sometimes I see websites like DPreview.com showing their camera's sample photos not rotated, thus I thought rotating them would reduce (a lit bit) their quality. It it a fair assumption?

dialex
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    I'd say windows photo viewer would be the worst thing to do any form of editing in if quality is what you're worried about. I've refused to use it ever since I saw it was editing exif info just viewing my photos, no idea if it still does that – Dreamager Aug 30 '11 at 10:05
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    Also, take into account that most digital cameras today add the Orientation EXIF tag to the image metadata. If you just want to rotate an image 90 degrees (from portrait to landscape or viceversa), modifying the EXIF tag is better. BTW, Windows Photo Viewer does not interprete this tag, but other software does. So probably your images are already in the correct orientation, and the problem is the software you are using. – Carlos Campderrós Aug 30 '11 at 14:38

3 Answers3

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Whether rotation loses quality or not depends on software (and its version) used and image dimensions. Images that have width or height (measured in pixels) not divisible by 8, cannot be rotated in a lossless way.

As for Windows Photo Viewer, Matt Grum has already given a stellar answer to the more specific question. For other software, you could use the sample images in his answer and try the same experiment.

Note that rotation can only be lossless for rotation by a solid angle or 180 degrees. Rotation by arbitrary angle always requires re-compression and also makes the picture softer, even if you use a non-compressed format (such as BMP) - the new pixels do not have exactly corresponding pixels on the non-rotated image and therefore have to be calculated based on weighted average of surrounding pixels.

After rotation by arbitrary angle, you might also lose some edge areas of your composition when you crop the image into a rectangle with horizontal and vertical sides.

Community
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Imre
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For years I have used ACDSee to perform lossless JPEG rotation, very handy and fast.

Recently I discovered that Windows (7) Explorer has a (Right-Click) Rotate Clockwise and Rotate Counterclockwise item that I put to the test.

I copied a JPEG image, then rotated it clockwise 4 times, then counterclockwise 4 times, then back and forth 4 more times. The modified timestamp changed.

In Photoshop I then loaded the two images as layers and compared, under high magnification, the JPEG artifacts visible at that magnification for each layer. They were identical.

Windows (7) Explorer can indeed be used to initiate simple lossless JPEG rotation.

Interestingly, EXIF information was updated (truncated somewhat) and a "Software" entry added which showed "Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer 6.1.7600.16385".

Ron Gross
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It all depends on the program you use. There are programs that can do it without losing anything, but most programs just decompress and recompress, thus losing some signal.

Among others, these programs can do it without loss in quality: http://jpegclub.org/losslessapps.html

Zds
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  • The list only shows applications that use lossless algorithms as provided by Independent JPEG group. Applications doing it based on original code or another libraries are not listed, including the Windows Photo Viewer that was referred in question (although Image Preview used in some earlier versions of Windows is listed). – Imre Aug 30 '11 at 10:03