Section 6.4. One-Click Fixups: The Rotate Button

6.4. One-Click Fixups: The Rotate Button

Unless your digital camera has a built-in orientation sensor, iPhoto imports all photos in landscape orientation (wider than they are tall). The program has no way of knowing if you turned the camera 90 degrees when you took your pictures. Once you've imported the photos, just select the sideways ones and rotate them into position (if you didn't do so during your first slideshow, as described in Chapter 4).

Remember, you don't have to be in Edit mode to rotate photos. You can select thumbnail images when you're in Organize mode and then use one of the following methods to turn them right-side up:

Choose Photos Rotate Counter Clockwise (or Clockwise).
Click the Rotate button at the bottom of the main iPhoto window. (Option-click this button to reverse the direction of the rotation.)
Press -R to rotate selected photos counter-clockwise, or Option- -R to rotate them clockwise.
Control-click (or right-click) a photo and choose Rotate Clockwise (or Counter Clockwise) from the shortcut menu.

Tip: After importing a batch of photos, you can save a lot of time and mousing if you select all the thumbnails that need rotating first (by

-clicking each, for example). Then use one of the rotation commands above to fix all the selected photos in one fell swoop.

Incidentally, clicking Rotate (or pressing -R) generally rotates photos counterclockwise, while Option-clicking that button (Option- -R) generally rotates them clockwise. If you want, you can swap these directions by choosing iPhoto Preferences and changing the Rotate setting on the General pane of the dialog box.

Note: When you rotate an image saved in GIF format in iPhoto, the resulting rotated picture is saved as a JPEG file. The original GIF is stored unchanged in an Originals folder in the iPhoto Library folder (see Chapter 4).