Can someone please recommend a good image editing tool for Linux that will help me accomplish the tedious task of rotating and trimming a lot of images in the most convenient possible way?

I have been taking a lot of pictures lately and often have to "align" them before they're ready to be shared. I need to rotate them a few degrees so they don't look crooked/tilted.

The Gimp does that, but after the image is rotated, black corners have to be trimmed out, probably with the Crop tool. That's easier said than done, I often miss the exact cropping spots and have to undo and try again, it's time consuming. The Gimp doesn't do that automatically.

Then I began to use Fotoxx. It has a pretty good Rotate tool that also has a Trim button. But Fotoxx is annoying in many ways, most notably for the fact that it's still too new and unstable, it crashes a lot. I can only edit 3 or 4 images before it crashes. 5 images if I am really lucky. Then I have to relaunch it, and it doesn't remember the directory I was working on, I have to type the path all over again, and my computer becomes a Pentium 166 if I dare launch any other image application e.g. Kuickshow while Fotoxx is running, it's a nightmare.

Can someone please recommend another image editing tool for Linux that will help me do this tedious task of rotating and trimming a lot of images in the most convenient possible way?

TIA

For this task, you pretty much have to do it by hand---since every picture needs a different amount of rotation and cropping. Personally, I would use GIMP.

The GIMP does almost everything automatically if you write a correct Script-Fu program. Also consider the autocrop function, which remove empty borders from the image (based on the color outside the edges of the picture).

Some doucmentation about script-fu here. Also look for Mike Terry's Black Belt School of Script-Fu! A must-read.

Except maybe getting the correct rotation........

Guys, please. The Gimp doesn't cut it. The Autocrop tool does not do what I want. The Gimp doesn't have that convenient Trim function that Fotoxx has -- in the very same dialog box as Rotate for a reason. It's meant just for that. Besides, The Gimp is quite slow when applying the rotation. Fotoxx rotates instantly.

But Fotoxx is way too heavy and unstable. What I need is some other application, if someone is aware of any such application...

kim is an interesting kde servicemenu add-on for KDE (3.x.y) written and maintained by Charles Bouveyron.

You can R-click on an image file, and then select Actions-> Kim-> Do all sorts of interesting things (including rotation) to the image.

The service menus in kim are easy to understand, extend and modify to your requirements.

kim uses the imagemagick package ( particularly convert and mogrify ) to do the grunt-work of image manipulation.

You might take a look at it here: http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Multi...Kim-2263.shtml
I expect you can extend it to make it do what you want.

Kim is totally inadequate for my task. It uses imagemagick, i.e. command line, so it only handles fixed values. It's good for turning landscape images into portrait or vice-versa because that is predictably 90 degrees, but that's about it. There is a "Rotate Custom..." option in Kim's menu, but that will prompt for a number to determine the rotation in degrees. How am I supposed to know that? Each picture has to be rotated to a certain, varying degree, and anyone who can just look at an image and accurately determine how many degrees (with decimal precision) the image needs to be rotated should be working in a circus. What I need is an interactive tool, like the one in Fotoxx.

I am sorry that you found it "inadequate". I thought it was useful, and an excellent example of how to use KDE's service menus to improve and customise KDE's functionality. I use kim frequently, and the concepts it taught me have served me well.

Maybe you should write your own application, I am sure we'd all like to try it. Or perhaps you should join the Fotoxx developers - you have the incentive to contribute something.

Or perhaps you just need to remember to consider the framing and angle of your camera before you press the "Take a photo" button ?

Otherwise, I am out of ideas. So, I wish you good luck in your quest, but please let us know (here) if and when you find the (nearly) perfect solution to your requirements