JPEG Lossless Rotator

Quick links: Download, Online Manual, FAQ

All people usually make photos with different shot orientatons, and some photos need to be rotated. When you rotate a JPEG photo, most image editors decode the photo, rotate the bitmap and then re-encode it back to JPEG. This process slightly decreases the final image quality. Unlike those tools, the JPEG Lossless Rotator does not recode your photo and performs a special lossless block transformation instead. As a result, the rotated photo has the same quality as the original. In addition, JPEG Lossless Rotator has a very simple multilingual interface and is easy to use for inexperienced computer users.

Features:

Shell integration (this allows you to rotate your JPEG photos by a right-click on the file)
Command line
Automatic rotation
Batch rotation
EXIF-data display
Multilingual interface: Albanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Thai.

Supported platforms: Windows 2000, XP 32 bit & 64 bit, Server 2003, Vista 32 bit & 64 bit, Server 2008, Seven 32 bit & 64 bit (please note, the shell integration may not work in 64 bit platforms at the moment)
Installation package.

License: freeware (for private non-commercial or educational use, including non-profit organization)

Latest version: 6.6 (12 December 2009)

Some minor exterior changes: better display of thumbnails (fit the window size without extra resizing), size of the address bar changes according to the size of the main window, text colour of the file names can be customised, status bar shows dimensions of the selected image.

Minor updates of version 6.6:
16 December 2009: file deletion bug has been fixed.
19 December 2009: Bulgarian interface has been added.
2 March 2010: Traditional Chinese interface has been added.
15 June 2010: Spanish interface has been udated, Spanish manual and Albanian interface have been added.

Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.6 (EXE), size 2.08 MB

Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.6 (ZIP), size 2.06 MB

Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.6 Portable (ZIP), size 2.16 MB. Portable version creates .ini file with settings when it is run from a removable device.

Please note, earlier versions of Windows do not support Unicode, so, if you use Windows 98, ME or NT, you should download non-Unicode version 6.4:
Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.4 (EXE), size 1.80 MB
Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.4 (ZIP), size 1.78 MB
Download JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.4 Portable (ZIP), size 1.86 MB

Online Manual

Manual en Español - Spanish Manual for JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.6 (PDF)

Getting Started

Install and run JPEG Lossless Rotator. Use the Browse button to find and open a folder with JPEG/JPG images. After you choose a folder, the program will create thumbnails of the images. If Include subfolders option is chosen, thumbnails of all JPEG images in all subfolders will be also created. Now you can select a thumbnail of a picture (or a few thumbnails by dragging mouse with left button pressed) and use one of the main buttons:

Rotate Left rotates selected image(s) 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Rotate Right rotates selected image(s) 90 degrees clockwise.

Rotate 180° rotates selected image(s) 180 degrees (turns the image(s) upside down). This button also contains a drop-down menu with Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical options for mirroring the image(s).

Additional Buttons

Recent Folder opens the folder that was opened before the program window was closed last time.

Favorites adds and keeps the 10 last chosen shortcuts to folders.

Automatic finds and rotates images that can be rotated to normal orientation automatically.

View Image opens full size image in the default viewer.

Delete deletes the image from disc.

Display EXIF shows EXIF information of the image.

Options

Options menu contains additional settings and functions of the program:

Refresh recreates thumbnails.
Rebuild thumbnails when window resized changes the size of all the thumbnails according the new window size. If this option is off, the size of the thumbnails does not change and scroll-bars appear if the window has been downsized.
Thumbnails in row... sets the amount of thumbnails in each row in main window.
Enlarge small thumbnails enlarges previews of images that are smaller than thumbnail size.
Keep file timestamp saves the time and data of the image that it had before the rotation.
Display delete confirmation dialog shows confirmation message when you try to delete an image by clicking Delete button.
Display crop warning activates/suppresses a function for a warning message to be shown when an image needs to cropped for lossless rotation.
Background color lets a user to choose any colour for the program window.
Text color lets a user to choose any colour for the file names under thumbnails.
High thumbnail quality (slower)/Low thumbnail quality (faster) defines the speed of thumbnails creation and the quality of thumbnail images (it does not have any influence on original images quality).

Hot Keys

Some of buttons have associated keys for qiucker work:

Arrow keys — to choose an image
Enter — to view the full size image
R — to rotate the image right
L — to rotate the image left
U — to rotate the image 180°
H — to flip the image horizontally
V — to flip the image vertically
Ctrl+Del — to delete the image
E — to show the EXIF-data

Shell Integration

You can click on a JPEG/JPG file icon with the right mouse button and choose “Lossless Rotate Right” or “Lossless Rotate Left” menu item to rotate the picture. The same works for a selected group of JPEG files. You can also automatically rotate all JPEG images in a folder by clicking the right mouse button on the folder and choosing “Automatically Rotate JPEG Images” menu item (provided that the JPEG files have orientation tags).

Note, to have access to the JPEG Lossless Rotator’s shell menu, you need to choose “Integrate JPEG Lossless Rotator with shell” option in the setup window.

Command Line

JPEG Lossless Rotator allows you to use command line for image transformation. The command format is:
<Path to jpegr.exe> jpegr.exe -[r|l|u|v|h] [-s] <filename>

r — to rotate the image right
l — to rotate the image left
u — to rotate the image 180°
h — to flip the image horizontally
v — to flip the image vertically
s — to suppress all warning messages

Example (Command prompt screenshot):

You can also run Automatic Rotation function using command line. The command format is:
<Path to jpegr.exe> jpegr.exe -auto <Path to a folder with JPEG files>
To include all subfolders, type -autosub instead of -auto. The program outputs messages as message boxes (not in command prompt), so you can use any command line, like “Run...” in Windows Start menu, by typing "C:\Program Files\JPEG Lossless Rotator\jpegr.exe" -auto "D:\My Photos\", for example.

Advice

So far three users let me know that JPEG Lossless Rotator did not work correctly with their photos. JPEG images have a very complex file format and some photo cameras manufacturers may vary its structure. Therefore, I would recommned you to test JPEG Lossless Rotator on a few unneeded photos made by your camera with the usual resolution before using the program.

Frequently Asked Questions

I can’t select multiple non-contiguous files by holding the CTRL key and clicking on thumbnails. What’s wrong?

Unfortunately, due to the specific behaviour of the thumbnail grid, it is only possible to select a single thumbnail or multiple thumbnails forming a rectangle area (next to each other and above/below each other).

Why doesn’t automatic rotation work with my photos?

If your camera is equipped with an orientation sensor to detect its orientation (horizontal, 90°CW, or 90°CCW) when you hold it, it can embed that information in the photo’s EXIF tag. JPEG Lossless Rotator then reads this tag and rotates the photo according the value of the tag. That is the automatic rotation.

However, some cameras do not have the orientation sensor and always put “Horizontal/Normal” value in the EXIF orientation tag. Therefore, such photos cannot be rotated automatically, as the orientation tag tells JPEG Lossless Rotator that the photo doesn’t need any rotation.

Why does JPEG Lossless Rotator not work correctly with photos of book pages, while it works perfectly with photos of landscapes, buildings and people? Automatic rotation rotates some pages incorrectly, and if I rotate them manually, then my viewer shows some pages incorrectly.

When you are taking photos of book pages with the book lying horizontally on a table, your camera lens is pointing down. In this position of the camera, its orientation sensor may define its position incorrectly, so it assigns an incorrect value of the EXIF orientation tag to the photos.

JPEG Lossless Rotator’s automatic rotation is guided by the EXIF orientation tags, and, if these tags have an incorrect value, the result of the automatic rotation is also incorrect.

When you rotate photos manually, you can see that thumbnails of the photos in JPEG Lossless Rotator show the correct position. However, because the initial value of the EXIF orientation tag was incorrect, the final value becomes incorrect too. Now, if your viewing program has an ability to show photos according their EXIF information, it will use the incorrect EXIF data and it will show you the photo incorrectly, while physically the photo is rotated correctly.

To achieve both a correct position of the photos and correct EXIF information, you should:

Apply automatic rotation to the photos. Do not worry that some photos will be rotated incorrectly.
Manually rotate those incorrect photos to their correct position.

Now your photos are in their correct position and their EXIF tags are correct too.

Why do Windows thumbnails not change when I rotate photos using context menu in Windows explorer, but when I open the photos in a viewer they are all rotated correctly?

If Windows thumbnails cache is on, Windows does not update thumbnails unless file modification date is changed or you update them manually. There are two ways to solve this problem:

If you do not need to keep your files’ date, you can uncheck “Keep File Timestamp” option in JPEG Lossless Rotator's “Options” menu.
If you want to keep your files’ date, you can switch Windows thumbnails cache off. To do so, open “My Computer”, then choose “Tools” menu, then choose “Folder Option” menu item, and then open “View” tab. Now check “Do not cache thumbnails” list item. If you do this, Windows stops creating thumbs.db files. It will take a little bit longer to create thumbnails when you open a folder with images, but in other hand, you will have less extra files on your discs. The described procedure is not applicable to Windows Vista or 7. If you use Windows Vista or 7, there is an option to clear the thumbnail cache in the Disk Cleanup (click Start, type cleanmgr or disk cleanup, select the the system drive letter and check Thumbnails in the list of files to delete).

Why does JPEG Lossless Rotator show orientation EXIF tag value as Right-hand side/top (Rotate 90 CW) when I see that my photo is on its left side?

The EXIF specification defines an orientation tag to indicate the orientation of the camera relative to the captured scene. If the program shows the value Rotate 90 CW, it means that your camera was on its right side (if look through the viewfinder, as you normally do) when you captured the photo. “Right-hand side/top” in this case means that the 0th row is on the visual right-hand side of the image, and the 0th column is at the visual top (in the normal position the 0th row is at the visual top of the image, and the 0th column is on the visual left-hand side).

Where are the original photos which I had before the rotation?

JPEG Lossless Rotator rotates and overwrites the original photos. It does it for several reasons:
a) most users don’t need the original photos with wrong orientation;
b) most users want to save their disk space;
c) most users don’t want to remember which photos are already rotated and which are not.

Is the rotation by JPEG Lossless Rotator really lossless?

It is lossless for any JPEG/JPG file, if its width and height (number of pixels) are divisible by 16 or 8 (depends on the digital camera or the way the image was created). Almost all common photo formats have width and height divisible by 16. For example, 3456x2304, 3072x2304, 2816x2112, 2560x1920, 2496x1664, 2048x1536, 1728x1152, 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480, 320x240. If your camera creates photos with a size that is not divisible by 16, JPEG Lossless Rotator may not suit you.

Why some JPEG images cannot be rotated lossless?

JPEG file structure does not allow lossless rotation of a file if its width and height are not divisible by 16 or 8 (depends on the digital camera or the way the image was created). If a file cannot be rotated lossless, JPEG Lossless Rotator asks you whether you want to crop the image edges by up to 15 pixels to make lossless rotation possible.

If the program does crop an image, it crops right and/or* bottom sides of images (which become bottom and left sides if you rotate 90°CW, top and right sides if you rotate the images 90°CCW,and left and upper sides if you rotate 180 degrees).

* “and/or” depends on if width only, height only, or both sides are not multiple of 16 or 8.

Why does the file size change? It was 1352 KB, and then it became 1297 KB! What’s happened? (My photo is 1024x768, so it should be rotated lossless)

JPEG file size change does not mean the same quality change. When you rotate your photo, JPEG-blocks have a new position and file size may be changed (decreased or increased).

If you need both original photos and photos in correct orientation, just make a copy of them before the rotation.

I like your free software. How can I reward you?

A happy user is a sufficient reward for me, however you can contribute to the happiness of the users by translating JPEG Lossless Rotator’s interface to your native language, correcting or completing the existing translations. The program has Albanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Thai interfaces at the moment, however, some of them are incomplete. I would be happy to add any other translations or have existing ones completed and improved. To translate the interface, you should download the zip-archive with language text file and translate the words and sentences after the "=" signs in each line. To correct an existing translation, please edit a language file from the "lang" folder in the JPEG Lossless Rotator’s directory (absent lines can be taken from the English language file). After that, please save the new/edited file file in UTF-8 and send it to me via contact form on the contacts page.

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