A general procedure to evaluate the rotational state population distributions of the nascent photofragments from the photodissociation of polyatomic molecules has been implemented with the use. of the kinematic distribution function developed by Chen and Pei [Chem. Phys. Lett. 124, 365 ( 1986)l. Numerical evaluations of rotational state population distributions of diatomic photofragments from photodissociation of the general class of triatomic molecules are presented. The calculated rotational state population distributions are compared with the most recent experimental data on OH and SH photofragments to obtain the information on the kinematic aspects of the photodissociating HzO and HzS molecules.