Is there such a thing as a simple image editor for Linux which allowed for scaling and rotating the image without using EXIF data for the scaling and rotation?
So far have I tried EOG, Shotwell, and GIMP and when I rotate the images, they store it in the EXIF header. This I don't want.
Even if GIMP could do it, it is much too time consuming as it requires tons of mouse clicks when dealing with JPEG files.
Best Answer
Saving Versus Export
I know you state you don’t really want to do this in GIMP, but in my experience the issue you are running into—software favoring EXIF orientation data over actually transforming pixels in the image—boils down to the difference between exporting an image and saving an image.
In the past, 100% all image editors in the world would actually transform/modify pixels when dealing with simple orientation transforms. It’s only relatively recently that image editing programs defer to using EXIF data to store some physical transformation data.
Why? Easy. Since the JPEG format is a lossy format—even when quality is set at 100%—resaving a JPEG for simple things like image rotation will slowly degrade the data. In contrast by storing that data as EXIF info, the raw JPEG image is left untouched but the transformation data is passed along so you can see the image rotated without degrading the image in the process.
This is where the export concept comes into play. Many image editing programs such as GIMP allow one to export an image which would basically mean modify the image data itself and optimize it for use in non-image editing software.
So while there might be other software tools that explicitly modify image data for tasks like rotation out there, it might be overkill to install and use them. Instead I would recommend simply experimenting with export functionality in whatever image editing software you are using; whether it be GIMP, Photoshop or something else.
Batch Processing
All that said, you do mention how GIMP might be too time consuming for your needs. Unclear what your exact workflow is, but if you have a folder/directory filled with JPEGs you might need to process, I would recommend investigating the tools mentioned in this other answer:
jhead
with the-autorot
option which is described as:Here is another tool mentioned in this other thread:
nconvert
with the-jpegtrans
option that is exactly what you are looking for. But I wonder if that just uses the same library/core functionality ofjpegtran
as this other answer on this question recommends?Finally, perhaps using the ImageMagick
convert
tool with the-auto-orient
option would work for you?