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Level 1

4 points

Rotating pictures in Preview

A co-author and I are writing a book. Research entailed visiting many archives, and photographing pages of cellar books, and of wine catalogues. Naturally enough, pages were photographed in order: at each archive, oldest books first, and within each book the pages from oldest entry to newest.

We have about fifteen thousand pictures, my folder structure on my computer being the same as that on his.

With Snow-Leopard Preview I would go to the folder for that archive, command-A command-O, and all the pictures would open. I could scroll from one picture to the next, either gesturing within the sidebar, or with appropriate keys. About half of all pictures needed rotating, done with command-R. So far, so good. Indeed, so excellent.

Now to my new Mac, a 27" beauty that came with OS Lion. The large screen is to see big pictures at the same time as editing the words of the book. And again, command-A, command-R, and scroll away. Ooooh: that picture is at ninety degrees: command-R. Annoying rhythm-breaking dialog box asks whether I want to unlock it (no, never ever change my original pictures, just never) or duplicate it (or, uselessly, cancel). Duplicate. So now there is a new window with just that picture, rotated. About half of all pictures need rotating, so quite quickly my screen is a disorganised mess of one-picture windows.

I have owned a Mac since 1988: please let this not be Apple’s Mr Clippy moment. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the Apple store I go. I get some sympathy, and some agreement that for my purposes new Preview doesn’t work well. Suggestion: download the old Preview from somewhere. So to my old Mac, now somebody else’s; archive Preview (and TextEdit); FTP up; back to my machine; FTP down and unpack.

Preview has a long complicated error message, the crunchy bit perhaps being “Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MeshKit.framework/Versions/A/MeshKit”.

(Aside: TextEdit works, which I hoped was great—no more over-writing my files behind my back. Alas the new TextEdit in the applications folder is super-locked and can’t be overwritten.)

Back to Preview. Please, how can I have a bulk open of pictures, in the right order, which are not altered by Preview, which are easily rotated (no dialog box), and which post-rotation remain in the right order? No new files; and no changes to the old (=only) files. Rephrased, Snow-Leopard Preview was really good: please could I have it back?

iMac

Posted on Nov 7, 2011 11:51 AM

123 replies

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 27, 2011 9:08 AM in response to Tom in London

Tom in London wrote:

Stoaty wrote: Switching versioning off by default would kill one of Lion's biggest features.

That's what I want. Until Autosave and Versioning are off by default, I can't work with Lion.

So, even if Apple makes a change to allow the user to turn it off, but leaves it on by default, you still won't use Lion.

Nov 27, 2011 9:30 AM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

So, even if Apple makes a change to allow the user to turn it off, but leaves it on by default, you still won't use Lion.

I have other, unrelated issues with Lion.

But if in some future iteration of Lion I can turn off Autosave and Versions, probably as a global System Preference, and maybe from time to time turn it on if I find it useful, then that would be a reason for me to take Lion seriously. That would be a big step in the right direction, back to sanity. That's always been the way Apple does things: leaving control of the System to the user.

The paradigm would be a car. When I buy a car it comes with all kinds of systems (aircon, radio, window winders etc.) I decide when I want to use these systems. I don't want the windows winding up and down when the car thinks they should open and close. I want to decide that.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 27, 2011 9:35 AM in response to Tom in London

You keep insisting that OS X makes changes without your consent.

Not true.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 27, 2011 10:21 AM in response to Tom in London

Tom in London wrote:

I have other, unrelated issues with Lion.

Such as? (must be minor, as you only have mentioned Versions in the past 8 pages)

Nov 27, 2011 10:32 AM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

Such as?

Not relevant to this particular discussion

Nov 27, 2011 10:33 AM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

You keep insisting that OS X makes changes without your consent.

Not true.

It does. In Lion, it saves things I didn't want it to save, changing files that are my property and that I don't want to be saved.

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,432 points

Nov 27, 2011 11:03 AM in response to Tom in London

Still not grasped that whole "file is not your property, there's no such thing as a file and your data is what's important and that is unchanged" thing then? Difficult, I know.

Regards

Nov 27, 2011 11:27 AM in response to Yer_Man

This is turning into the typical TD "you're stupid" personal attack. He seems unable to maintain a normal tone.

Before I sign out of this thread for a while, let me just say that my files are my property, not Apple's.

It's interesting that TD's response is not to argue that Apple hasn't changed my files without my permission, but to try and assert that my files are not files at all and are not my property. Implicitly, this acknowledges that Apple is changing my files without my permission.

But who cares? Let TD stew in his own juices for a while. I'm sure they're very flavoursome.

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2011 11:58 AM in response to Stoaty

No flaming please.

Stoaty wrote:

Switching versioning off by default would kill one of Lion's biggest features.

Default settings have several meanings. What happens in a new installation of Lion is not the argument. It can be versions with green spots, for all I care.

What I mean is that my Preview always treats the files as mine (whatever the lawyers say). I don’t need to insist on that file-by-file, nor even session-by-session. (Installation-by-installation would be fine.) That might happen because I have changed some setting somewhere, been warned that Apple’s lawyers don’t like it, and verified whether that is what I really want. That is what I really want: don’t change my pictures.

Your phrasing is odd. You seem to be implying that the reason to keep versions is that Lion ≈ versioning. Hmm: if I were selling Lion upgrades at $30 each, that reasoning might appeal. However, I advise not sharing that reasoning with users. So I’ll assume that it was merely careless phrasing.

Stoaty

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2011 12:37 PM in response to jdaw1

Auto Save and Versioning is one of the big headline features introduced by Lion. The others were Multi-Touch Gestures, Full Screen Apps, Mission Control, Mac App Store, Launchpad, Resume, Air Drop and Mail. As many of these were in previous in some form, it was one of the big new things. To most users, Auto Save and Versioning is an excellent reason to purchase Lion.

I am sorry it does not work for you but for others it is great.

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2011 12:40 PM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

Search for "image viewer" in the App Store (there are few under Photography).

Here's one that looks like it does what you're looking for:

uPhoto Quick Viewer

uPhoto Quick Viewer is one software that can help you quickly view your photos. You can Slideshow,rotate ,flip,search ,sort,remove,trash , set desktop image elc...

★ Features ★

✓.Easy management

Drag your photos or folders to the specified zone, uPhoto Quick Viewer will open up photos or all files of folder quickly, including its sub folders.

✓.Support JPEG,TIFF,PICT,BMP,GIF,PNG,TGA,SGI,PSD,EXR,JP2 file formate.

✓. Search easily

You can easily find files you need by sorting them or entering full or part of name in “search”field .

✓. Slideshow’s function

Click SlideShow button ,enter slideShow mode

✓. Management function

Select one picture, you can delete it, copy it, enlarge it, narrow it, and flip horizontally or vertically.

Opened a picture. Rotate, to save neck ache. And up comes the usual tamper-or-new-window-or-Cancel box. There are other routes to the same problem, including one in which it makes a copy of all the open pictures.

In the words of British Caledonian, “We never forget you have a choice”.

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2011 12:42 PM in response to Stoaty

I am sorry it does not work for you but for others it is great.

If you will admit that there are at least some tasks made much less friendly by Lion, I’ll call that a victory. Then maybe Apple will ask itself how to keep the good and allow opting out of the bad.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 27, 2011 12:52 PM in response to Tom in London

Tom in London wrote:

Tony T1 wrote:

You keep insisting that OS X makes changes without your consent.

Not true.

It does. In Lion, it saves things I didn't want it to save...

Not possible. If you didn't want Lion to Save, then the file would be Locked.

Tom in London wrote:

...changing files that are my property and that I don't want to be saved.

Also not possible. The OS does not make changes to files, the user does.

(Not counting System and Preference files, which the OS is constantly updating -- or do you have a problem with that also?)

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Nov 27, 2011 1:00 PM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

Opened a picture. Rotate, to save neck ache. And up comes the usual tamper-or-new-window-or-Cancel box.

You have a chance of getting an option to turn this off if you contact the uPhoto author directly. (some 3rd party vendors are more responsive to user requests than others).

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2011 1:07 PM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

Have any readers experience of Xee?

I am much happier now. Xee is slick, and non-Lion. Yay!

Rotating pictures in Preview