Rotating a picture
As for the position and the size, rotation of a picture can be done manually or using a dedicated dialog box. The Rotation dialog box is described in Chapter 6 (Formatting Graphic Objects). To rotate a picture manually, do as follows:
- Select the picture if necessary so that the green handles around it show.
- Click the Rotate button
on the Drawing toolbar. This toolbar is usually located at the bottom the screen, but it can be undocked and used as a floating toolbar. If the toolbar is not showing, select View > Toolbars > Drawing. The Drawing toolbar is discussed in detail in
Chapter 5 (Creating Graphic Objects).
 | The icons representing the functions in the toolbars are different, depending on the operating system used and on whether OOo has been customized for the Linux distribution in use or not. When in doubt, hover the mouse over the icons and wait for the tooltip to appear showing the name of the button.
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- Eight red circular handles replace the green square handles, as shown below. Move the mouse over one of the corner handles and the mouse cursor shape will change. Click the mouse and move in the direction in which you want to rotate the picture.
- When satisfied, release the mouse button.
Shape showing the red rotating handles
At step 2 a black crosshair with a circle appears in the middle of the picture: this represents the pivot point for the rotation. Normally the center of the picture will be just fine, but on some occasions you may wish to rotate around a corner or even around a point outside the picture; to do that, click on the crosshair and drag it to the desired position before applying the rotation, as shown in Figure 5.
To restrict the rotation angles to multiples of 15 degrees, press the Shift key while rotating the graphic. This is very handy to rotate pictures of right angles, for example from portrait to landscape or vice versa.
