1. A handheld image capture device having an actuating mechanism, the device comprising: a camera body; an imager positioned in front of the camera body and configured to capture an image; an actuating mechanism positioned between the camera body and the imager and providing the imager with one or more degrees of freedom (DOF), including at least one of a pan DOF, a tilt DOF, and a rotate DOF; and a programmable processor configured to auto-rotate the imager to align a dominant visual edge of an object with edges of an image field of the imager based on the image, wherein the dominant visual edge is determined by the programmable processor by identifying edges of the object in a temporary image and processing the edges to determine which is a dominant edge, thereby aligning the dominant visual edge of the object when the object is not parallel to edges of the image field.