Rotate in an image editor The Filmstrip view in My Pictures, and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, feature the ability to rotate photos left or right. This is a handy way to turn upright a flopped vertical. But, in many cases, it?s better to perform this rotation at another point in the digital workflow, especially if you?re trying to preserve every ounce of image quality in the original photo. This isn?t true for all formats, but it is for JPEG and many RAW formats. Here?s why:
If a JPEG is rotated in My Pictures or the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, it?s resaved. Every time a JPEG is resaved, the image is degraded slightly. The best time to rotate the picture is when it?s being adjusted in an image editor, since it has to be resaved anyway (and it can be resaved in a format like TIFF, where no additional quality loss is incurred).
If a RAW file is rotated in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (in most cases, the rotation buttons in My Pictures are disabled when a RAW file is selected), chances are the high-resolution RAW picture data will be lost in the process. In general, this will happen with RAW files that use the TIFF file structure. This includes RAW files from the Canon EOS-1D, Nikon D-series, and Kodak DCS series cameras.
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