[rosmari]

When I take a vertical pictures, it downloads horizontally. When I rotate it to vertical, the picture is being noticeably narrowed.

In my old computer I had a program that addressed that problem, but I can't locate it anymore.

Help!

[bicycle bill]

Maybe you had Irfanview?

[ChuckE]

What are you using to view the pictures?
When you rotate the picture, do you still see the whole picture?
When you see the whole picture, is it distorted? meaning, do the people appear taller, skinnier, shorter, or fatter than what you remember.

By the way, your perception of "When I take a vertical pictures, it downloads horizontally" is misconstrued.
You rotated the camera to allow your picture to be more vertical, the pictures taken in that position are now 90 degrees from the usual camera's perspective. It is not that they download in any particular direction. ... I know what you mean, but it is a semantics thing.

[rosmari]

It is indeed Irfanview - thank you.

[ChuckE]

OK, so your viewer is IrfanView ... that is, assuming that you were answering the first question I asked.
But what of all the other questions I asked?

Or perhaps, indeed, I should assume you did not even read my questions - thank you.

[rosmari]

sorry, Chuck, didn't mean to ignore you.
I usually open (and edit) with HP Image Zone. The picture becomes narrower when it's rotated by a quarter, but I still see the whole of it. But the people become skinnier.
Though the Irfanview "Lossless Rotation" does narrow the picture somewhat, the people still seem to be their original size.
If you know of a program which doesn't alter the dimensions of the picture when rotated, that would be even better.

[bicycle bill]

How about Giftworks?

http://www.gifworks.com/

[ChuckE]

When you use terms like "does narrow the picture somewhat" I am not sure what you are seeing. A screen capture would do wonders to remove ambiguity.

IrfanView "Lossless Rotation" has next to nothing to do with what you see on the screen. That has to do with what details may be lost in the saving of the image, not what you may notice on the screen.

If, using IrfanView, rotating the picture changes the aspect ratio of the subjects in the image, then your screen is probably not set for the correct screen resolution.

This is also totally ignoring the fact that rotating a picture will change the overall size of the picture, BUT the people, or whatever, do not get fat or skinny. Their aspect ratio remains the same.

Aspect ratio? that is the appearance of (for want of a good example) a round circle appears a true round circle even when rotated. Neither more narrow, or more fat on the screen. If you have no issue with the screen resolution THEN a true circle remains a true circle whether rotated or not.

I just went through this with another person, so I will do it here too.
Look at this webpage:
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourk...estpatt_in.jpg

and tell me if the circles are round or oval.
If oval, are they skinny (more tall than wide) or fat (more wide than tall).

[rosmari]

to Chuck: the circle is skinny.
to bicycle bill: I converted the .jpg file to a .gif file, but don't find how to rotate it on the gifworks.com

[ChuckE]

OK, so, since the circle is skinny, that tells me that your screen's resolution is not proper. The reason is that the circle is really a circle, not oval at all. In fact, on your computer, if you take that very same image and rotate it 90 degrees, you will find that the circle remains skinny, in the very same direction it was before the rotation; the skinniness does not change with the rotation. Surely that tells you something, right?

OK, so now we are sure that the screen resolution is off, we now can see that any attempt to try and "fix" your original posting is just all for naught (not worth doing). That's because no matter what we do, it is not a problem with your computer, per se, but a problem with your setup.

To really fix your problem we now need to know a few things about your computer, please answer ALL the following questions, there is a reason ... once I get these answers, then I may have a couple more...

1) Is your display an LCD or a tube type? (also called a CRT, or Cathode Ray Tube). By the way, a laptop will have an LCD.
2) What is the brand & model number of the display (or in the case of a laptop, the brand and model of the laptop itself).
3) If you know how to find out what screen resolution you are currently set at, tell me what it is. If not, tell me what Operating System (Win98? WinXP? WinVista? etc.) you are using, and I can give you specific directions.

Your turn ...

[bicycle bill]

Originally Posted by rosmari

to Chuck: the circle is skinny.
to bicycle bill: I converted the .jpg file to a .gif file, but don't find how to rotate it on the gifworks.com

Well if you want to try it .

When you open Gifworks there is a very small "Click here to begin" in blue upper left.
Next click file>open
Browse to your gif
Click upload>edit>rotate

[rosmari]

to bicycle bill: in "edit", any rotation (or flipping) doesn't rotate the picture, but makes the person in it very fat.

to ChuckE:
1) it's a free standing flat screen - I assume LCD
2) Microtek 710S
3) WindowsXP; resulution 1024x768. This resolution gives me the optimal size for text. I suppose I could change it temporarily when editing pictures?

[ChuckE]

The Microtek 710S is an LCD screen with 1280x1024 native resolution.
1280x1024 has a 1.25:1 aspect ratio, and
1024x768 has a 1:33:1 aspect ratio

Since your screen's resolution is not the same ratio as what Windows knows your monitor to be, that is going to distort your images.

It would behoove you to set the actual screen resolution to the native resolution of the LCD screen. The reason is that way Windows "knows" exactly where one actual pixel ends and the next starts. Without setting it that way, Windows will "smudge" the image and especially text characters as the pixel on/off would not be where the pixels actually start/stop. In other words, you will notice that the crispness of fonts (fonts show the problem more easily than graphics) will be not as crisp as you should see.

Now I know you have said that having your screen resolution adjusted to 1024x768 (instead of the better native resolution of 1280x1024) and that "This resolution gives me the optimal size for text."
But, please believe me, that is not OPTIMAL. It is only a size that you are more comfortable in reading text at.
There are more, and better ways of adjusting your screen fonts to a more pleasant viewing size, and screwing around with the Windows setting for screen resolution is the least better way to do it!
Not only are you not noticing that the fonts are blurry, but because of the different screen aspect ratios, the images are being distorted.

Here is a better way of adjusting your screens magnification, and keeping everything else in line.
1st) get your Windows screen resolution set to the native resolution of your LCD screen (1280x1024), then
2nd) adjust the magnification of your overall screen with ONE SETTING, by:
a) right-click an empty area on your desktop, and select [Properties]
b) select the "Settings" tab
c) click on the [Advanced] button
d) on what may be called the "General" tab (your driver may call it something else) look for the display's "DPI setting." It will probably already be set to "Normal size, 96 DPI"
e) change that DPI setting to "Large size, 120 DPI" (or Custom setting, if you want to play with other numbers).

That DPI 120 setting should give you nearly identical character magnification that you had before, with NO blurriness, and NO aspect ratio distortion.
It really is best to do it this way.

(Sure, you could play around with the Windows desktop individual font sizes and types to tailor specific area changes, but adjusting the overall screen DPI setting is a one-stop-shopping solution to get all fonts changing in appearance on the screen.)

By the way, adjusting the DPI setting does not usually affect the graphic sizes, since most webpages use the screen pixels of the screen to display graphics. Not all webpages will be like that, but most.

Last point, there is one more setting you could use to really clarify the display of fonts. This does not alter the graphics, at all. That setting is called using "ClearType"
The setting is found at the (right-click an open area of the desktop) Display Properties, click the "Appearance" tab, [Effects] button, and make the setting: "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:" to "ClearType"

You can read more about ClearType, the hows and the whys, at:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx.
Plus! there is a real nice on-screen ClearType "tuner" there that will allow you to adjust for some slight screen differences that some LCD panels have from the others.

[rosmari]

to ChuckE: it worked - thank you!

[ChuckE]

If your issue has been resolved, now there is one more thing for you to do.
That is, to mark this thread as "Solved."
It is a setting that only the original poster (or a moderator) can set. Please do so.