Photoshop CS2 Thinks Its Helping, but its not.

June 3, 2007 10:58 AM

Why does Photoshop CS2 automatically rotate my photos when it opens them, and how can I get it to stop.

I just upgraded from Photoshop 7 to CS2.

I do extensive amounts of batch processing, consisting of taking groups of photos, changing the resolution and the pixel dimensions and adding a text tag in a particular place.

I have actions that I set up years ago to make this happen, and they imported from 7 to CS2 easily.

The problem is that all of my actions rely on the photo being horizontal on the screen.

CS2 takes it upon itself to automatically rotate the images it feels should be vertical when it is opened. 7 didnt do that. This is wreaking havoc on my actions. Is there a setting in CS2 that I can turn off so it will stop automatically rotating?

The nature of my photography isn't limited to the camera being horizontal or vertical. Frequently it is pointing straight down or straight up, and I use photos from a wide range of cameras and photographers (so changing an auto-rotating setting on a camera isn't going to solve this problem).


Anyone know how to make CS2 stop "thinking" it knows what I want?

TIA!

P.S. Are there any other things CS2 does like this that I should be aware of?

posted by sandra_s to computers & internet (9 comments total)

"PS CS and CS2 both read the EXIF Auto-Rotation data without permission or prompting from user. It is very annoying and there is no way to turn it off that I have found."

You might want some kind of batch EXIF editor to strip the rotation flag.
posted by aye at 11:03 AM on June 3, 2007

Most cameras have an orientation sensor that records how the camera was being held when each picture was taken. CS2's behavior is correct and in fact a feature. Revise your actions so they work properly with the images in any orientation.
posted by kindall at 11:06 AM on June 3, 2007

kindall: Yeah, it's a feature, but that doesn't mean it's correct. The asker said that they have many pictures where they shoot up or down, in which case the orientation will probably be incorrect. This is really more of an issues with the software doing something it wasn't asked to do. Also, it can be next to impossible to make actions work with both orientations. If you're doing any sort of larger scale batch work, images almost need to be the same.



As far as batch removal goes, I'd be willing to bet that IrfanView could do the trick. It can handle the usual image formats, as well as many RAW files. It almost might be able to do a lot of what you do in Photoshop already.
posted by niles at 11:39 AM on June 3, 2007

Nah, adapting the actions isn't rocket surgery. Take the script below, save it as forcelandscape.js in the Photoshop/Presets/Scripts directory.

doc = app.activeDocument;
if (doc.height > doc.width) doc.rotateCanvas(90);

Then just add that script to the beginning of each action, or else add it to the Open handler using File > Scripts > Script Events Manager so it runs whenever you open a file.
posted by kindall at 12:03 PM on June 3, 2007 [2 favorites]

BTW, it would also be possible to have another script automatically change the rotation back after running the action (based on the EXIF data) if you wanted.
posted by kindall at 12:07 PM on June 3, 2007

hey, you're cheating! That's JavaScript, not an action :P

*saves file to computer*
posted by niles at 12:25 PM on June 3, 2007

My similar issue: CS1&2 think that certain kinds of G4 Tiff files are actually for video and make the pixels NOT SQUARE by default. I've actually talked to a developer on the Photoshop team about this.... you can't turn it off, you can't change the behavior -- it just does it.

Really dumb.
posted by n9 at 3:25 PM on June 3, 2007

I use jhead to fix this by stripping out the rotation data.
posted by odinsdream at 4:00 PM on June 3, 2007

For example:

jhead -norot *.jpg
posted by odinsdream at 4:01 PM on June 3, 2007