Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 3545
Easier Cropping and rotating of images
Last modified: 2017-05-15 15:42:49 UTC
IN microsoft publisher there is a feature which makes cropping and rotating of images a breeze. In OO.o it is very difficult to achieve good results as these features are not included in all the relevant programs (writer, presenter and paint)and especially the cropping part is very difficult to do in a convinient manner due to the small preview. So what would be a nice way to do this? Well as I said: Publisher does in the following manner (I seem to remember) After having clicked an image I have the usual rezize arrows popping up when I point at the edges. If I do it with 'ctrl' pressed I get an rotating arrow indicating that I can rotate the image and if I press the 'alt' key I get a scissor indicating that I can crop the image instead of resizing it. This is in my opinion one of the most awkward things to do in OO.o, improving this would give me a far faster program to work with!
Reassigned to Christian.
Reassigned to Bettina.
In Powerpoint there is a Crop icon. After clicking it the handlers of selected image change and can then be used to scale the frame of the image instead of scaling the image itself. It works, is well known by Powerpoint users and doesn't require one to memorize modifier keys (allthough being able to use modifier keys for fast access is nice.) Anyway, it's very important that any kind of cropping snaps to grid and guidelines for serious layout work.
The method in OOo is a real pain. About 30 minutes to get one graphic to fit a document last week. I would end up cutting to much or to little. It would be nice if OOo could be configured to open an external graphics program as an option.
IMHO this is really important. If I recall correctly, this becomes impossible when using a placeholder field or a text box. I need to rotate images for some of my Writer templates.
*** Issue 49184 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 38076 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 70466 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
This Issue is 4+ years old, concerns a reasonable User expectation and has 30 votes. I would suggest at least targetting for 2.X to keep this on the radar... Also, since picture cropping is applicable in the whole suite, I don't believe 'Word Processor' is the correct component. Cheers, Andrew.
Dear developers, please consider targeting this feature for 2.3 as it seems to be in demand - look at the number of dups and votes for 3545 and also number of dups and votes for http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12909 (which seems to be duplicate of 3545). Thanks a lot for your attention.
*** Issue 12909 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
This issue already 5 years old, and have many votes. including in issue 12909 . I hope this issue will be assigned to developers, and set the target soon. Thanks
Isn't issue 66403 a duplicate ?
*** Issue 76939 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Pictures can be rotated in Impress (a good feature), and Calc (you can rotate by inserting the number of degrees). But in writer, you can't rotate pictures... why! Can Writer use this feature same as Impress??
Come on guys, five years is a far too long a time to wait for a basic feature like rotating a picture!
Hi Mathias, I have changed the current owner to your owner. Please take the ownership of these enhancements.
I was tired to wait for that feature, so I wrote a small extension to simplify images cropping.You can find it here : http://www.alicvb.com/Programmes/cropooo/ or in the OOo extension repository. Even if the forum of this extension is in French, feel free to post your comments in English ! AlicVB
Is there not target for this issue? Please start working on this old issue. I would highly appreciate it if I would be able to rotate images in Writer some time in the future. Thank you.
Issue 3545 has no target and is marked for Writer, but http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improved_picture_cropping_for_draw describes the feature for Draw and Impress targeted for 3.0.
Really nice to see the crop feature being worked on. Just a small additional wish: I would like to see the current dimension of the crop selection (in pixels or some other unit) displayed in the status bar (or somewhere else, e.g. like a tool-tip when the mouse button is held pressed). It is sometimes important to crop the exact dimension, and this dynamic feature has the advantage of being faster than the dialog. So it makes sense to see the crop dimensions, too.
agreed this is an important feature, important that cropping be controllable by mouse with immediate visual feedback (rather than by incrementing/typing obscure numeric values)
CrOOop addon should be used by default in OOo.
I mistoken, the name of the extention is CropOOo and can be fouund at the adress following : http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/460
There is a lot of inconvenience to use another grafic program when I need rotate image a little degrees to the right (left). I use Vista Ultimate x32 and OpenOffice.org 2.2.0 (vertion of OO.o 2.3.0 is unstable). MS Office 2007 is very raw program. What is hardware need to MS Office 2007 ??? It use HDD, RAM all the time. That`s why i choose OO.o Vboss
Is it possible to implement the patch for Issue 83933 in Writer too?
*** Issue 89267 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I asked cl and he declined. Writer treats images a "little" bit different than Draw/Impress as it has additional features (anchoring images at certain objects, wrap etc.).
Cropping of images/pictures/graphics should be easier. In addition to the dialog, it should be offered to crop directly via the selection handles of a picture by dragging with mouse. I added this text, so that this issue could be grep'd easier.
*** Issue 81344 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
i give my 2 votes for this issue and in particular for the "rotate thing". Writer already has a "flip orizzontally" and a" flip vertically" buttons for images inserted in the document. i think that it would be very nice to have a "rotate image 90° left" and a "rotate image 90° right" buttons as well.
*** Issue 89586 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Please add this! Lets get the rotate into writer.
It would be a huge step forward for release 3.0 if the picture toolbar would be expanded with a number of buttons leading to the desired functionality e.g: rotate button Klicking on it will activate free rotation with the mouse crop Klicking on it will generate the ability to crop the picture by sliding the sides with the mouse Compress Klicking on will give the user the ability to lower the resolution of the pictures as disired and or remove the cropped areas Keep in mind that Sun has made an extension for this purpose "minimise presentation". It can reduce the document size with a click and still give a good print quality The drawing toolbar should be expanded with a rotate button with the functionality mentioned above
It would be a huge step forward for release 3.0 if the picture toolbar would be expanded with a number of buttons leading to the desired functionality e.g: rotate button Klicking on it will activate free rotation with the mouse crop Klicking on it will generate the ability to crop the picture by sliding the sides with the mouse Compress Klicking on will give the user the ability to lower the resolution of the pictures as desired and or remove the cropped areas Keep in mind that Sun has made an extension for this purpose "minimize presentation". It can reduce the document size with a click and still give a good print quality The drawing toolbar should be expanded with a rotate button with the functionality mentioned above
I totally agree with koertf. Those 3 functionalities (rotate, crop, compress) are really needed !
It's important to have OOo Writer support this function -- rotating of images though OOo Draw does support. Often people are asked to finish this job with external tool like OOo Draw and which is acceptable in the view of editing. *** However the problem comes as one import a MS Word file (even in *.doc). In OOo 2.4, Writer CAN NOT correctly import a MS Word file containing rotated image while cropped images can be imported in right format.
Of course full set of image functions would be great, but even a small step would be useful -- rotation by 90,180 and 270 degrees.
This bug is pretty much a complete blocker to me for using openoffice since almost all of my microsoft office documents use rotating and/or Cropping. This is becoming ridiculous this feature is like something basic that just needs to be there i really don't know why this isn't getting any attention (or maybe it is but without and noise about it) but this feature really have to make it to openoffice 3 or if its feature freeze guess I'm sticking to microsoft office.
Now that version 3.0 is released can it please be considered?
With version 3.0 it's OK for Draw but not for Word processor. Please do it for Word processor. Thanks.
WOW!!! the new rotate button in Draw kicks ass!!! it would be great to have that button in Writer too
Sorry, but there is no new rotate button in Draw. If you really mean the rotate button it is available for ages...
really? ok... but it is not available in writer. i need it there
Target 3.x
*** Issue 96016 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
i hope traget 3.x will result in a 3.1 fix and not in a 3.9 fix
Currently, it is not planned to have this implemented in OOo 3.1
ok. i hope you will make it for the 3.2 :-)
Just a workaround not a solution in V3.0 1 Open Draw 2 insert picture 3 rotate and / or crop by using toolbars "drawing" and "picture" 4 Copy to clipboard 5 Open Writer 6 Paste (now a Draw object is inserted instead of a picture) Rotation of draw objects is possible and easy, cropping not And yes, I vote for these features will be in Writer available as in Draw also. Please let's try to do the same job in all programs with same user commands.
I am evaluating whether our company can (and should) start working with Open Office. It seems very strange to me that such a (basic?) functionality is missing in such a mature and capable program! But a real shock to find out that this functionality has been requested March 17 of 2002!!! If this is the way problems etc. are handled, then I already know the result of my evaluation...
If you are assessing whether OpenOffice.org can be applied in your company, but are stuck on one issue such as this, why not consider how much you might spend on the licensing of a proprietary product, the development of which you, most likely, CANNOT influence. For less than that same budget, you could offer a bounty to a developer who first implements (and is credited in the source code) with this feature - or better still, implements an improvement upon the original concept. One commercial benefit of OpenOffice.org is that you CAN influence its development, to better align it to your business needs.
This issus was selected as one of the next enhancements to fix. As 3.1 seems to be impossible I set the target to 3.2.
Do I get it right that OOo development gets insulted because Draw (coming as a free part of OOo) has a feature that Writer (coming as a free part of OOo) does not have yet? A thing that can be workarounded via application-to-application clipboard? Writer is not a DeskTopPublishing or professional graphic tool kit. It is a WORD processor. Yet. SBA->MBA: Within this crowd of user experience and product design and marketing experts that can not contribute ressouces but wishes, I think it is time to remind of this once more: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/why_all_issues_are_equal Thank you for your reading and comprehension. But OOo 3.2 sounds a good. Unless it starts to rain developer ressources until then, consider to leave some fixes of crashes behind. Those bother only others.
sba u r perfectly right. that post was offensive. but i assure most users don't share that point of view.
sba, thanks for the link - obviously that helps provide insight into the decision-making process behind the scenes. Still, for those who can contribute financial (not developer) resources and who might need a helping hand understanding how to do so, there's this page: http://contributing.openoffice.org/donate.html From this I take it that the OOo development team(s) welcome temporary developer resources into the fold, to help push the overall effort forward.
Thanks for all the response! By all means I did not intend to be offensive. I am sorry if some people felt it was! But the thing is that (like in many companies) most employees are not PC enthousiasts but just regular users. For them it is already good when they see Word and Excel, when they see something else they will need to be convinced that it is good! The funny thing is that images are important for user manuals and spare part books. That's why I started looking for the rotate function immediately... B.t.w. it is not a matter of costs since the whole company works with MS Office already... But I do see serious advantages in Open Source and especially Open Office! Thank MDA, version 3.2 sounds very good! Misterdee: this 'bounty' idea could be interesting as well, but I'd rather suggest a community donation to the management. Once again; I did not mean to be offensive, I just explained the situation for me and my company. I suppose it was a bit too direct. My sincere apologies for that!
@moefit ok. let's shake hands. @sba do u have an approximate timeframe for 3.2? end of 2009?
@tommy27: At times, OOo 3.2 is scheduled for August 2009. For OOo 3.1, the release overview looks like this: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoRelease31 For OOo 3.2, a corresponding overview does not yet exist because the "fine planning" can not be made yet.
thank you 4 the infos.
It seems like we could just automate the process of embedding a new Draw object and pasting the image into it. For example, if the user selects Insert > Picture > From file... , we insert a Draw-type OLE object of the same size as the picture, then insert their picture into it. If they Paste the image, we do the same. That would save on the duplication of effort and make Draw's powerful image manipulation tools conveniently available.
i like the workaround that ezjay proposed. a macro or an extension could do that?
> a macro or an extension could do that? Yes, I guess so. But then still the user has to leave the object after having rotated the image, and maybe has to resize the ole object. It will only be a partial work around. So I keep my fingers crossed for 3.2 :-)
There is currently planning in progress to replace the Writer specific graphic implementation by the Draw graphic implementation. When this is done graphics can be easily cropped and/or rotated directly in Writer. Thus, there will be no special effort being made for this issue, but this issue will be solved when the replacement has been made. When the issue for the replacement is known, I will depend this issue on it.
nice news. do u think this will done in OOo 3.2 or in future releases?
The planning will show, if we will make it for OOo 3.2. Thus, please stay tuned.
thanks, i will keep my fingers crossed !!! :-)
I still really wish we can also get that extra dot that you use to rotate graphics in Microsoft office its really comfortable and fast.
@someone4746: When the shapes are DrawingLayer shapes, You will get the same beaviour as in Draw/Impress. As sonn as You go on rotate, a handle to select the center of rotation is offered which can be moved. HTH.
Hi Armin, but the problem ist, that it work only for DrawingLayer shapes! The user is not aware that there are diffrent types of graphics in Writer. From the user interface standpoint, the available actions for any graphic should be the same, independend if it's a single Shape from the drawing toolbar, an embedded Draw graphic, an inserted GDI Metafile or an inserted Bitmap. At least the basic operations like Scaling, Rotating and Positioning should work the same way for all of them! Best Regards, Jörg
AW: With 'When the shapes are DrawingLayer shapes' i referred to the state after the planned change. There will only be DrawingLayer GraphicShapes, so usage will be the same for all, that's one of the reasons for that change :-)
Created attachment 61081 [details] An image showing microsoft office rotating circle
Look at the screen shot that i attached to see what i really meant by Microsoft office rotating circle.
this issue has been confirmed to be fixed in OOo 3.2 read here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ Features#Features_planned_for_OOo_3.2_.28November_2009.29
OD->HBRINKM: Please take over this issue. OD->tommy27: It is confirmed that it is _planned_ to have this issue solved in OOo 3.2 by project http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Unification_of_Graphic_Objects_and_Embedded_Objects.
@od that new feauture looks very interesting
We have delayed working on the drawing objects refactoring due to urgent bug fixes. Thus -> 3.x
Please reconsider, and find time for this. Such a feature would really help OpenOffice, most of its releases contain many features that most users wont ever use. But this is a feature that anyone migrating from Microsoft office will need. Especilly if he has a document with rotated images which then makes him return to Microsoft office. Its sad that many features in Feature requests in openoffice get pushed away for less important ones or having a release with no serious feature development because of bug fixing.
i understand the priority to fix more urgent bugs, however i hope that 3.x target will turn into 3.2.1 instead of 3.9...
@tommy27: It's much more likely 3.3, because as far as I know 3.x.1 are always just bugfix releases.
well, 3.3 is still better than 3.4 or 3.9
This is a really really useful tool, and many beginners refuse to use OO for such simple things like this. I'd be nice if we could have this fixed really soon.
this extension could provide some help http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/ project/WriterRotationTool&usg=AFQjCNGSxsMMktq6uXKs1Gyoj0H3N8FRGw
sorry, here's a better url... http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/WriterRotationTool
This WriterRotationTool extension is great, thank you ! (for default implementation a simple +/-90° would be enough I think, and ergonomy could be improved via a right-click menu, but this extension is a good workaround for the moment)
yes, +90° and -90° presets would make this extension even better. i made this request to the extension author. please support my request dropping a comment here: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/WriterRotationTool
That is strange, but the extension do not work for my OpenOffice 3.2 Writer ignores this extension, although it is installed. Maybe I'm doing something incorrectly. Explain to me how to use it, please. I think I have tried all ways to the rotation by mouse.
after installing you should have a new icon in your toolbar. take a look at the left side of the toolbar... a blue square icon should be there. insert an image in a Writer file then click that image and click the new icon. red handles will appear around the image allowing any kind of rotation
to tommy27: Thanks a lot. I think it would be better to add this button to Image toolbar by default. Also it would be useful to add the buttons of simple rotation (+/-90°). Maybe there is such extension for cropping images? If not, can someone create it?
@assistent try this extension: CropOOo http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/cropooo
@tommy27: Thanks again. Good tool for cropping. I have supported your request here: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/WriterRotationTool and also proposed another variant of improvement. I believe that someday, these tools will be included in the official release (preferably as soon as possible).
@assistent in the meantime we should thank the authors of those 2 nice extensions that allows user to crop and rotate images in Writer in an easier way than default OOo functions
Will the issue "easier rotating of images in Writer" be solved in version 3.3? I have heard quite some time now from colleagues: "What, they don't support rotation of images? I can't believe it."
Please integrate it in Oo 3.5!
@mba: Drawing objects refactoring is being worked on for quite some time now. How is the progress? What is a realistic release version in which this issue here will be fixed? Thanks.
Taking over the issue.
Setting the right version + removing old mails on CC
It's unbelievable after so many years, and having flip horz & vert, we still don't have this in Writer.
This is missing feature.
90° degrees left/right image rotation in Writer has been recently implemented in LibO master (future 4.1 release). https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.1 https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Write-rotate-ui.png
(In reply to comment #101) > 90° degrees left/right image rotation in Writer has been recently > implemented in LibO master (future 4.1 release). this is just a hack
@Ariel: Why do you consider this commit over there at LO a "hack"? Does it seem to you not being properly implemented?
(In reply to comment #101) > 90° degrees left/right image rotation in Writer has been recently > implemented in LibO master (future 4.1 release). > > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.1 > > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Write-rotate-ui.png and of course, I find it disrespectful and inadmissible that you promote a fork using OpenOffice resources, like this bugzilla; this seems to be the only thing that's happening here, as I haven't seen any other contribution to this project: http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3A+org.apache.incubator.ooo-dev+from%3A+barta%40quipo.it http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Aorg.apache.incubator.ooo-issues+%22barta%40quipo.it%22 (Side note, it seems I "contributed" something to LO, according to these release notes. This simply marks the fact that they just take code developed here, because its good and the license allows it)
(In reply to comment #103) > @Ariel: Why do you consider this commit over there at LO a "hack"? Does it > seem to you not being properly implemented? Yes. Not property, or poorly, or both. You can read this thread http://markmail.org/thread/g74nmlkyqoejlqo6 The proper fix for this is "removing the Writer implementation for images/pictures, introduce all its features missing in the Drawing Layer implementation for images/pictures and use the Drawing Layer implementation for images/pictures in Writer." Fortunately OpenOffice counts with experienced developers on the field of Writer (Oliver) and drawing layer (Armin).
@Ariel there's nothing irrispectful... just facing the fact that a 12 years old issue could be fixed... you say that LO fix is bad? maybe it is, but you should provide a better fix then...
@Ariel: Thanks for your explanation. @Tommy27@Ariel: Please stop this AOO/LO discussion here in Bugzilla. From an enduser point of view, there is no competition between both projects as both are opensource and based on ODF.
@GerryT I agree with. Fixes in one project should be seen as inspiration to do the same thing in the other project and viceversa.
@tommy27: Unfortunately I have to disagree with you here. While in principle it is of course a good idea to get inspirations from other projects, this case is different. This 11yr, 2mo old bug about a missing basic functionality is a symbol, a tribute to everything that is wrong with the OO project. Killing (fixing) this bug could endanger everything OO stands for (decay, unwillingness to compete with MS Office). It is therefor vital for this bug to remain CONFIRMED but with no fix in sight for at least another decade.
Dear developpers, This issue is still alive only in AOO. Seems to be fixed in LibO. And the WriterRotationTool OXT doesn't work with AOO 3.4 and later. Did you think that is possible to make something?
(In reply to oooforum from comment #110) > Dear developpers, > This issue is still alive only in AOO. > Seems to be fixed in LibO. *This* bug is not fixed in LO. Insert an image, rotate it. Save the file. Unzip the file. You'll find that the rotated image is stored, not the original one; while image transformations (draw:transform, fo:clip, draw:luminance, draw:contrast, draw:gamma, draw:red=, draw:green, draw:blue, ...) should happen only on the view, not on the picture itself. > And the WriterRotationTool OXT doesn't work with AOO 3.4 and later. > Did you think that is possible to make something? With the extension? Contact the extension author and see if s/he can update it.
(In reply to Ariel Constenla-Haile from comment #111) > *This* bug is not fixed in LO. > Insert an image, rotate it. Save the file. Unzip the file. You'll find that > the rotated image is stored, not the original one; while image OK I'm not a developer. Maybe this is not really fixed in LO but for end-users, they can to rotate image. No matter how it works behind the scene ;-) > With the extension? Of course, I talk to fix directly in Writer.
FWIW, live image cropping has been implemented in LibreOffice 5.0. Can the Apache OpenOffice project get even more pathetic?
Reported for OpenOffice: 2002 Implemented in LibreOffice: 2015 Implemented in OpenOffice: ???? Implemented in MS Word: some decades ago
(In reply to atalanttore from comment #114) > Implemented in LibreOffice: 2015 No, read comment 111
Still not working !!! How can we make it happen ?
(In reply to castelain.gautier from comment #116) > Still not working !!! > How can we make it happen ? What is not working? Did you try to install extension mentioned at comment 92?