Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
▪
In the Editor
. Click the Rotate button at the bottom of the screen to turn your image
counterclockwise. (If you want to turn your photo clockwise instead, click the tiny arrow
next to this button, and then click the button that appears.) You can also right-click/
Control-click a thumbnail in the Photo Bin and choose Rotate 90° Left (or Rotate 90°
Right). Finally, you can go to Image→Rotate→90° Left (or 90° Right)
▪
In the Raw Converter
. Click the left or right arrow above the preview area. (Flip to
The
Raw Converter
to learn about the Raw Converter.)
Those commands all get you one-click, 90-degree changes. But Elements has all sorts of oth-
er rotational tricks up its sleeve, as the next section explains.
Rotating and Flipping Options
Elements gives you several ways to change a photo's orientation. To see what's available, in
the Editor, go to Image→Rotate. You'll notice two groups of rotate commands in this menu;
for now, it's the first group you want to focus on. (The second group of commands works on
layers, which are explained in
Chapter 6
.) The first group of commands includes:
▪
90° Left/Right
. Use these commands to fix digital photos that arrive in Elements on their
sides.
▪
180°
. This turns your photo upside down and backward.
▪
Custom
. Selecting this command brings up a dialog box where, if you're mathematically
inclined, you can type in the precise number of degrees you want to rotate the photo.
▪
Flip Horizontal
. Flipping a photo horizontally means that if your subject was gazing
soulfully off to the left, she's now gazing soulfully off to the right.
▪
Flip Vertical
. This command turns your photo upside down
without
changing the left/
right orientation the way Rotate 180° does.
TIP
When you flip photos, remember that you're making a mirror image of
everything
in the
photo. So someone who's writing right-handed becomes a lefty, any text in the photo will
be backward, and so on.
