Probably insufficient time hardening off before they hit full sun. Try putting newspaper cones around them during the hottest part of the day and see if that doesn't help.

Hard to tell without a picture, but sounds like sunburn. I've got a few peppers that aren't hardening off too well, same thing happened. The tomato plants just have a few "freckles". Haven't seen much sun around here lately, the tomatoes can take a couple hours a day of direct sun but any sun seems too much for the peppers.

Did you harden them off? Did you have many sunny days while hardening them off, and if not, has it been sunny and hot since transplanting?

Gary types faster - my keyboard sticks.

These plants were out in the sun and elements for a few weeks. That said they were not getting full, day long sun. Now they are. Although Ive never heard of such a thing I think the sun burn idea may be it. Will the plants recover? Its been rainy and cloudy for the past few days. Will that return them back to normal. What happens when they go back to full sun(7am-4pm)?

I haven't had the problem with tomatoes that you're having (and I'm having with peppers this year), even last year when it was so cold and rainy in May (and June) they didn't sunburn in July. All I can say is that I've got my little peppers back in the house while the tomatoes are camping out in the garage to at least get used to colder temps overnight.

I plan on putting them out tomorrow if we have any non-rainy periods (I didn't today), and once it gets sunny again will start exposing them slowly to the sun - could take more than another week to harden off if all this week is cloudy.

Since yours are already in the ground, just try to give them some shade on the sunny days, gradually expose them to more sun each day just like you would during hardening off. The sunburnt leaves won't turn dark green again but given good soil the new leaves should be fine. Are you getting new growth?

any ideas?

Whoa! Definitely sunburn in the last pic, but the other 2 look like something's been eating the leaves! Have you seen any insects on them? Looks like there's some sort of beetle on top left of the biggest leaf in 1st pic - too big for flea beetle but I can't tell what it is. Hope someone can ID it for you. I've never seen Swiss-cheese leaves like that before.

Are these pix all of 1 plant? The plant might survive if you can get rid of the pests, and give it some shade. But if all the leaves on some of your plants look like the first 2 pix, I don't know, might be best to start over (still have to get rid of the pests and make sure the plants are hardened off).

The soil doesn't look very good. Did you amend the holes before planting? If not, I think some fertilizer would be a good idea.

Mulch around the plants to keep moisture more even and reduce the likelihood of disease organisms in the soil splashing onto the leaves when it rains. [For this reason, you shouldn't water in any way that will splash onto the soil.]

You can use almost anything as mulch: straw, bark, paper, grass clippings (as long as you didn't use weedkiller on the lawn), shredded leaves.... Avoid wood chips, though. Mulch will also drastically reduce the number of weeds you have to hoe or pull.

the soil is very rocky...would that create problems?

Rocks aren't necessarily a problem ... but if there are too many rocks, there's that much less soil volume to feed the plant.

Is there much organic matter in the soil? That's more important than a few rocks ... though you've got more than a few!

(I swear I haven't seen such rocky soil since I tried planting perennials in a high corner of our Connecticut yard that gave every evidence of being primeval glacial moraine -- and that was many decades ago.)

Yep, that looks like CT soil. But what's eating the leaves?

matthew - if you're in CT, CAES will provide free soil testing.

Here is a link that might be useful: CT Ag Experimental Station soil testing