Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Rotate and Straighten with Picasa

If you held your camera sideways to take a tall, vertically oriented picture (a skyscraper, for example), you could end up with your subject lying on its side when you view the photo on your PC. Some cameras, for example, save all pictures the short way, in landscape mode. In Picasa, you can set your photos straight using the rotate buttons (Figure 9-6) at the bottom of the Lightbox.

Follow these steps to rotate a picture:

1. Select the thumbnail image you want to rotate.

   When you click a thumbnail, a border appears around the image showing that it’s selected. You can select and rotate more than one image at a time.

2. Click one of the arrow buttons below the Lightbox to rotate the thumbnail 90 degrees.

   You’ll see two buttons: one for clockwise rotation, the other for counterclockwise. Keep clicking until the image is positioned the way you want it.

Straightening Your Photos

Sometimes, when you click your camera’s shutter, you’re paying so much attention to your subject that you don’t notice everything else is askew. The horizon is sloping, trees are ready to topple, and buildings lean over like cheap stage scenery (see Figure 9-7 for an example). For times like this, Picasa makes it easy to straighten your photo and put things back on the level. The Straighten tool is a slider that pivots your photo around the center point in small increments, cropping it slightly (if necessary) to maintain a rectangular image.

Figure 9-6. Use the two arrow buttons at the ...