Sideways pictures

Important note: if I read what you write, I don't think you changed the orientation property, you probably just flipped the image 90 degrees by having it rewritten from resolution size AxB to BxA. That's fundamentally different! In this case, the orientation tag can be ignored altogether (and as far as I know it will erase any existing orientation tag).

I have a similar problem so I'll post here before starting a new thread.

My problem involves a set of photos I took with a Nikon D80, processed in Photoshop and Lightroom, and then sync'd into my iPhone.

Let me see if I can explain the problem I'm having with photo orientation and rotation: I can't get "portrait" oriented photos to display properly.

When I get to a photo that was taken in "portrait" mode, the iPhone displays it in "landscape" mode. In other words, the image appears as a small image, vertically displayed within the horizontally oriented iPhone frame.

If I rotate the iPhone, the image rotates until it fills the frame, like it's supposed to. But what I wind up with is the image lying on its side in landscape mode. I can't rotate the iPhone to a vertical perspective, because when I do... the image rotates back to the cross-ways orientation I started out with.

I can only fill the frame with the portrait-oriented image when the iPhone is in horizontal, landscape mode, and the image is lying on it side. I can't get the portrait mode image to fill the frame if I hold the iPhone vertically.

In fact, the image is ALWYAYS on its side, regardless of how the display is oriented. I cannot get any of these vertical/portrait images to display properly.

Surely there is a solution to this dilemma? I hope I've described it adequately.

Displaying images on my iPhone is one of the reasons I bought it. Hope I can straighten this out (no pun intended).

Thanks,

--PS

The best I can figure is that the iPhone stores orientation data inside the image file, and iPhoto and Preview display them based on that information.

When I viewed my pictures in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, they were sideways (even upside down!), but that application has a rotate button, and the rotate sticks (saves) when you finish viewing the picture.

Your photos are always saved in relation to the iPhone, so if you turn the iPhone sideways (landscape) to take a picture, the photo itself is sideways - regardless of the orientation data saved in the photo. Your viewer may understand and rotate it when viewing, but the photo is still sideways. When on your web site they are rendered just the way they are (sideways) - your browser (IE, Safari, FF) is just rendering a file, it doesn't look for orientation information.

Either use a Windows machine with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer or find a simple image viewer/editor that can rotate pictures before you upload your pictures.

i have the same problem. but mine is kind of different.

after i import them into the computer i delete the originals and store them on my computer. when i put them back into the phone the phone displays them rotated when they were not before. but the weird thing is that it is only some of the pictures.

Kasie,

How are you getting the images out of iPhoto and uploading them to the Web? There is an orientation tag inside of the image that appears to not be transferring somewhere along the way.

Kevin

Kevin,

Is there someway to restore the "orientation tag" ? I had no idea there is such a thing, though of course there would have to be something.

The photos were taken with a Nikon D80. Copied into a folder on the desktop folder on my MacBook, processed in Lightroom and Photoshop (is that where the tags might have gotten lost?), exported to a new folder under the "Pictures" folder on the MacBook, and then sync'd to the iPhone using iTunes and selecting that directory.

Care to venture where along the line the tag got lost? During the "export" procedure, maybe? Is there a way to restore those tags?

Thanks,

--PS

Driver,

Checked this out on the Net and I see a lot of instances when the tag is lost that it went through an Adobe product first. I'm not saying that's where it got lost, but just a point of fact.

Try this: Create a new folder to sync to your iPhone. Drag in an afflicted image. Open the image in Preview. Press Apple-R continuously until the image rotates to the correct orientation again. Save it. Sync this folder.

This process will reset the orientation tag in the image. I'm betting that will fix it. The reason I would create a new folder is that rotating and saving in the old folder may not register as a change with iTunes so it many not re-sync the image on your iPhone but keep the old one.

If this corrects it, you have a few options to make the process easier in the future. Using iPhoto for your iPhone images will probably correct it as well. Or you could create a Folder Action in Automator which rotates the image 180 degrees twice. Any file dropped into the folder that will sync with your iPhone will be processed automatically.

Kevin

I guess I'll have to keep that suggestion in mind.

The problem I sited was with the "preliminary" versions of the photos; I've done some more LR and PS processing from the originals, and when I transferred the new files to the iPhone, everything was correctly oriented.

But that idea of setting the rotation in "Preview" and saving.... boy, I hope I can remember that next time I run into some kind of problem.

Thanks,

--PS

This thread looks a bit confusing to me. I wonder if people really understand what the orientation tag really does.

A JPEG image has a resolution (A x B pixels). On most camera's, this is done in a 4:3 ratio, meaning the image can be, for example, 1920 x 1440 pixels, on a 2.8 megapixel camera. In normal use, this means A is the width and B the height of the image. That's landscape mode. In portrait mode, the camera is turned 90 degrees, and obviously the image will then be 1440 x 1920, where the first is still the width and the second the height of the image.

Now, some camera's have an orientation sensor inside, which tells it whether it's turned on it's side or not. If a camera doesn't have this feature, you will always have to rotate the image with some sort of software that can modify the image. This will actually change the resolution (from A x B to B x A). But, if your camera does have this feature, you will, in most cases, not have to modify the image afterwards anymore - most image viewers recognize the orientation tag that has been set to the image (saved in the EXIF data of the JPEG image), and will display the image accordingly.

The problem here, it seems, is that the iPhone does not deal with this feature well. I've read two situations:

1) iPhone images taken in portrait show up on the iPhone, and in iPhoto or Preview correctly, but uploaded to a website (or lets say, viewed in non-Apple software) incorrectly (KassieWalker's problem)

2) Portrait images taken from a digital camera and uploaded to the iPhone show up sideways on the iPhone (in other words, the orientation tag is ignored) (driver49's problem)

I myself have a Canon DIGITAL Ixus 850IS (or PowerShot SD800IS, same thing, different country), which also stores EXIF orientation data, but when photo's are synced to the iPhone using iTunes, they all appear in landscape mode.

My conclusion: the iPhone (and all other Apple software) uses a non-standard way to save orientation information. This results in 2 situations:

1) iPhone pictures do not contain valid orientation data as far as non-Apple software goes

2) Either the iPhone ignores valid EXIF orientation information, or it is stripped by iTunes reformatting

To me, this looks like a bug (more along the lines of a bad design choice than a little typo error here or there) on Apple's side.

For me, this is not a big problem. I don't want my full set of photos on my iPhone (currently this is > 9 GB of data, and the 'selected' photo's are still as much as 4 GB in total), so I only take the best ones, copy them to a seperate location and have iTunes sync that location with my iPhone. It's not a big problem to rotate those images manually (we're talking about 236 pictures right now, of which less than half is in portrait mode). But, I do think it would be much nicer if Apple would follow industry standards in this case.

I think one issue is that the accelerometer in the iPhone (which is used the get the tag from) is often not changing position. I don't think the issue is faulty accelerometers, but the fact that the iPhone must be at a 90 degree angle to the earth to make sure the accelerometer moves. To see if the accelerometer has changed, just look at the little camera in the shutter button. If it's not oriented horizontally, your image will not be oriented correctly. To check this out, point the camera your feet and then turn the view to vertical still pointing at your feet. The orientation of the little camera on the shutter button will not change. Start titling the camera up. At about 45 degrees you'll see it change. Checking the little camera before pressing the shutter should end orientation issues.

As for a non-standard tag, I'm not sure. But I do know that if the image is showing the correct orientation in the film roll and I email it to my .mac web gallery directly from the iPhone the orientation will always be correct.

Kevin

The problem you are referring to is not the same as the problem discussed in this topic so far. The topicstarter is talking about images that appear correctly on the iPhone but incorrectly elsewhere. This means the accelerometer must have been in the right position, otherwise the image would not have shown up correctly on the iPhone.

The second problem mentioned is even more clearly a software issue.

This probably has been posted, but I missed it if it was:

I changed the orientation within iPhoto (Apple-R) and then after synching, the new orientation was displayed in the iPhone.

I created albums in iPhoto named by topic, such as: Hawaii iPhone, Family iPhone, which are the "Selected albums" I choose to synch when in iTunes.

srsaz