Image loses major quality as soon as it is rotated in Photoshop CS5

Question

I'm trying to create an image in Photoshop CS5, in the image I have smaller images that need to be rotated (25-40 degrees or so), but as soon as I do that they lose quality and you can see zig-zag edges and hard to read text, I made the smaller image into a smart object, but it does not fix the problem, I know it can be done because I've seen rotated screen shots online and they are of good quality, and not vector images either, so what is happening? The image I'm trying to rotate is 1024x768 resized down as a smart object, so the quality to start with is not too great.

PS: The image is of a website screenshot, I'm trying to put it in a portfolio.

Solution

The problem is due to the small size of your image.

If you are rotating by an angle other than 90, 180, 270 or 360 any horizontal or vertical lines will come non-vertical, thus giving you aliasing effects. These are also known as "jaggies". It's because a diagonal line has to be represented as a series of steps rather than true angled line.

If you can, rotate the higher resolution image and then resize it to the desired size.

Comments

[Naidim]

It's not really a deficiency in Photoshop as such, as jpeg is an export format and not a working format. The only real need for jpeg rotation is for digital camera pictures, so programs like ACDSee can do it losslessly.

[Mankind1023]

I pasted the screenshot of a website into a PSD file, and I'm working with that, so I'm technically rotating the PSD, I tried saving as PNG but same problem, it's really getting to be an issue, I need to be able to work with these files and edit them so saving as JPEG and rotating after won't work.

[Mankind1023]

As I mentioned in the comment below, I'm working with the PSD of a screen capture, so its not a JPEG yet, it's like any image you need to move around and work with.

[fixer1234]

You are trading one problem for another. You can reduce the aliasing but that process sacrifices sharpness and detail. You can't rotate an image at an angle other than a multiple of 90 degrees without degradation (even ignoring the jpeg issue). The smaller the image, the more noticeable it will be because the artifacts are larger in comparison to the size of the detail in the image.