Membrane suspensions of unperturbed rhodopsin and rhodopsin perturbed with 2.5 mM octanol were photolyzed with 477 nm laser pulses at 20 degrees C and 35 degrees C. Changes in absorbance were monitored at times ranging from 1 microsecond to 80 ms after excitation. The data were analyzed using singular value decomposition, global exponential fitting and kinetic modeling. A recently proposed model involving the photointermediate Meta-I380 (T. E. Thorgeirsson, J. W. Lewis, S. E. Wallace-Williams, and D. S. Kliger, Biochemistry 32, 13861-13872, 1993) fits data for samples with and without octanol. Comparison of the microscopic rates shows this alcohol accelerates the formation of Meta-II via Meta-I380. Activation and equilibrium thermodynamic parameters obtained from Arrhenius plots suggest that octanol reduces the entropy increase in forming both Meta-I380 and Meta-II. It also lowers the enthalpy of Meta-I380 relative to Lumi and of Meta-II relative to Meta-I480. To help determine whether octanol affects the protein directly or indirectly through the lipid bilayer, similar experiments were conducted using rhodopsin solubilized in 0.13% dodecyl maltoside with and without octanol. Spectral shifts in the presence of octanol suggest that a direct protein interaction exists in addition to previously reported effects dependent on membrane free volume.