Patent ID: 7450263

Claim:
A method for rotating images, the method comprising: obtaining a stream of RIP data defining images, the stream of RIP data produced by a raster image processor; subsequently modifying the stream of RIP data to rotate the images defined in the RIP data; wherein modifying the stream of RIP data comprises: applying first, second, and third shearing operations to the stream of RIP data in sequence, wherein the first and third shearing operations shear in a first direction and the second shearing operation shears in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction, wherein the first shear operation yields first sheared data and the second shear operation comprises building output scan lines by assembling pixel data values from multiple scan lines of the first sheared data; and wherein assembling the pixel data values from multiple scan lines of the first sheared data comprises, for each of a plurality of blocks of N contiguous pixel data values in the output scan line, inserting a block of N contiguous pixel data values from a scan line of the first sheared data corresponding to the block.