Rotating Images to obtain quality results.

Rydium-41 · 12-24-2006

Hi to all.

This is my first time posting here so tell me if I am doing anything wrong.

Regarding the topic, I need help with rotating images. In many softwares (including PhotoShop), the rotate option lets us rotate the image to whatever angle we are trying to obtain but the thing is that once we rotate the image to a certain angle, whatever may be the rotation angle, it always comes out distorted. In the case of PhotoShop, the rotated image is slightly blurred.

Please see the pictures below:

Let us use this image as an example:

This is a very simple 2D illustration of a weapon, created using MS Paint.

This is what happens when we rotate it in PhotoShop:

As you can see, the result seems fine but the enlarged segment of the trigger and slender part of the weapon show that there are various other pixels also included in the picture.

Below is another example of the same image rotated using a different software:

The image has been distorted and it has many unlinked lines. Something that is not really good to look at.

This final image shows a modified version of the above image:

See the difference? The unlinked gaps have been filled, lines are a bit more straightened and the overall result is much more acceptable than Fig 3 which is without any adjustments. However, this result was acquired only by manual editing which took some time.

So, my inquiry is that is there any way to rotate images to a quality much like that seen in the above example of Fig 4? It is absolutely frustrating to edit images that have been distorted, the process takes a great deal of time and can be quite strenuous at times. Is there any method in PhotoShop or any other software that can allow us to attain rotated images of better quality? I've tried to search for various Programs with the Rotating feature but most of them are either very intricate to get hold of as most of the time, it fails to download and most of the ones I've seen, give me the same results that are in Fig 3.

If someone could help me here, I'd really appreciate that.

Thanks.

wombie · 12-24-2006

you could maybe try and get hold of a program that converts raster images to vector. then you could rotate and scale with no loss of detail at all. Or you could do the line art in a vector program such as adobe illustrator to start with?

dunno if this helps :P

Rydium-41 · 12-24-2006

Isn't that option available in PhotoShop? About the Raster images to Vector.

Also, like I have stated above, I did search for some other softwares and in fact, did find Illustrator and attempted to download it but the link broke and I received a truncated setup file of Illustrator. If you could give me the link to a site where I can download a working setup file of Illustrator, I'd appreciate that.

BTW, thanks for the reply.

-Rydium_41

Jacorre · 12-24-2006

Since Photoshop is a pixel based program that's why you see the jaggedy lines, especially when you rotate objects. I'd definitely go with a vector program. Another vector program I like besides Adobe Illustrator is Corel Draw. It's also cheaper than Illustrator. The suite actually comes with Corel Trace which will take any image you'd like and vectorize it. But I would try and trace it yourself since that's the better way to go!

Rydium-41 · 12-24-2006

Illustrator and Corel Draw you say? I must try these programs indeed. If you can, could you provide me a working link?

Also, you say that tracing an image ourself is better than vectorizing it. By this, do you mean that it is better to draw the rotated image than to rotate it and vectorize it?

Thanks for the help.

-Rydium_41

Jacorre · 12-25-2006

You can find all Adobe products at Adobe. All Corel products can be found at Corel Corporation - Home of CorelDRAW, WordPerfect, Paint Shop Pro, Photo Album and Painter.

When I said that tracing it yourself would be better, I meant it in terms of learning. It's better to trace something yourself using the Pen tool instead of having a tracing program do it for you.