Rotate and save JPEG images without compressing again

[Sannyasin Sivakatirswami]

Does anyone know of a way to import a jpeg image and rotate that image 
save the file without re-compression of the data, and also maintaining 
the original file size?

Most of the photo manipulation tools we have on the mac (OSX): 
Photoshop, iView, ImageReady can all do this. Unfortunately these tools 
each have their draw backs for a production schedule wherein one is 
trying to dispatch processing of anywhere between 15 and 70 incoming 
hi-res digital photos  from a camera in 10-15 minutes time. Here is 
where a home made app in Rev really shines as you can pre-script all 
the paths for moving, archiving, copying files and making deletions 
etc. for your particular work flow context.

My only problem is with  incoming images that were previously down 
sized and compressed in ImageReady (under a batch process) . that need 
to be rotate to an upright position.

The incoming image into my Rev process is only about 16 K... but 
quality is pretty good even though it was compressed down to quality 35 
JPEG compression in ImageReady

but if I rotate the image simply with

"set the angle of image "currentImage" to -90
    ## clockwise in this case

Then I'm stuck... exporting the image with Rev's onboard compression 
quality of 100 will maintain the quality of the original incoming 
(--even though this is still breaking the rule of "compress only 
once!") but the image file size balloons back up to 70-80K... if I 
start setting the image compression to anything less the photo is  
completely degraded from the double compression.

    set the angle of image "currentImage" to -90
     set the jpegquality to 100
    export image "currentImage" to URL ("binfile:"&tPath&".copy")  as 
JPEG
set the filename of image "currentImage" to ""
  set the angle of image "currentImage" to 0
   set the filename of image "currentImage" to (tPath&".copy")

The above is the only way I can see to re-save the rotated image... do 
we have any other options?

If I go back to doing this in ImageReady it can increase the task time 
by as much as 30 minutes, too much for a daily process that is only a 
small increment of a larger work flow.

Sannyasin Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
katir at hindu.org

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