Getting started: Rotating photos

You can use this tutorial with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements versions 7 and 8.

Learn how to use the powerful Rotate feature in Adobe® Photoshop® Elements, which makes it easy to change the orientation of your photos. Find out what happens when you rotate JPEG images.

• More full-sized videos like this one
• Photoshop Elements 7 videos
• Photoshop Elements 8 videos

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, install the following software:

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or later

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Rotating a photo

When you rotate a photo in Photoshop Elements, you have the option of saving a copy of the original photo.

To rotate a photo:

1. Start Photoshop Elements and open the Organizer workspace.
2. Select a photo to rotate by clicking its thumbnail in the Photo Browser.

   The border changes to blue, indicating that it is selected and ready to be rotated. Notice there are two rotate options above the Photo Browser, as shown in Figure 1. There is a button for clockwise (right) rotation and a button for counterclockwise (left) rotation.

   

   Figure 1: A. Rotate Left (counter clockwise), B. Rotate Right (clockwise)

3. Click one of the two rotate buttons to turn your selected photo in the desired direction.

   A message appears telling you that your file is a JPEG file, which is a compressed file using a lossy algorithm. In other words, to make this file smaller for storage, pixels are thrown away. Rotating this file is the equivalent of opening the file, changing it, and resaving the file. Every time you do that to a JPEG, you lose a few more pixels. To avoid losing pixels in this JPEG file, Photoshop Elements makes a copy of the file and rotates that copy, leaving the original untouched.

4. Click Yes to rotate the photo and make a backup copy.

   The photo thumbnail is now rotated. Notice that there is a wide gray rectangle around the thumbnail. There is also a blue icon on the upper right, and a small gray arrow to the right, indicating there is another copy of this file. See Figure 2.

   

   Figure 2: Photo stack

5. Click the small gray arrow to the right of the stacked photos. The rectangle expands to show the original photo along with the rotated version, as shown in Figure 3.

   

   Figure 3: Photo stack shown expanded

6. To hide the original, click the gray arrow again.

Where to go from here

If you enjoyed this tutorial, check out these other resources to help get you started using Photoshop Elements.

• Photoshop Elements Essentials for Windows tutorials on lynda.com
• Photoshop Elements shows on Adobe TV
• Photoshop Elements Help and Support
• Hiding and deleting photos
• Moving files

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