All my images on are on their side!

We know. Because skaters are upright most of the time, we shoot almost everything in "Portrait" mode. That's a fancy way of saying we turn the camera on its side. Since the Photo CD contains unedited images directly from the camera, your images are stored on disk exactly the way the camera sees them -- on their side.

If you have a cheap digital Point & Shoot, you are probably used to turning the camera on its side and then having those images be automatically turned on their side when you view them on a computer. The cameras we use have this option, but not every photographer turns it on. There are good reasons for this, but the result is that you have to turn your pictures so they look upright manually.

Sometimes, even though a photographer has "auto-rotate" setting turned on, the pictures still appear on their side anyway. This is because not all programs honor the "auto-rotate" settings; some programs just display the images the way they are stored on disk. Some programs get confused and display some images on their side and some upright. There is nothing we can do about this -- it's a function of the program you are using to view the images.

But I get a crick in my neck when I look at the images

We recommend you keep the images unrotated and only rotate ones you want to work on in a photo editor. However, not everyone likes to work that way. If you want all your images rotated, there are ways to do this without editing each one by hand.

Most picture editors have a Rotate command. Most picture editors let you select all your images in a preview mode and select the "Rotate" command. You want to rotate your images 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Before you attempt this, you should copy all the images to your hard drive as explained in the I got my CD. Now what? tutorial. As you are probably aware, you can not edit images on a CD so they won't rotate until you move them to a hard drive. Once they are all rotated, you can burn them back to a new CD if you want your DVD player to play them as a slide show.

In Photoshop Elements

Rotating in Photoshop Elements is very typical of how most image viewers and editors rotate.

Select "Browse Folders" from the File menu and navigate to your images (make sure they are on a hard drive and not on the CD). Select All via the Edit menu. Click on the Rotate button in the top tool bar.

In iPhoto

Using iPhoto is pretty much the same. Import your image using "Add to Library" just as you normally would. Select all the images to be rotated. Select "Rotate Counter-clockwise" from the photos menu. (Or click on the "Rotate" button at the bottom of the Library window.) Now, whenever you use iPhoto, all your photos will be in the correct orientation for viewing.

A caveat

You should be aware that some picture editors don't really rotate the images when you batch rotate them, but just turn on the same "auto-rotate" setting as some cameras do. If you rotate your images in one of these programs, you run the risk of your images appearing unrotated again if you use a different program. If this is a problem for you, use a Picture Editor like Photoshop Elements or iPhoto to do your batch rotating.