Windows iTunes sync photo orientation incorrect

I feel your pain. I have been syncing photo folders as well from Windows Itunes to Iphones and iPads for years. This orientation problem started possibly with ios9, not quite sure. I didn't make too much of it as it was just a few of my new pictures I added to the folders last fall. However I just started syncing with a new Itunes install and now many photos all through my folders aren't displaying the correct orientation on ios devices (orientation is good in Windows). It seems like photos taken in portrait orientation with a Sony NEX6 are showing up as landscape on the ios devices.

I have had a similar problem since October 2015:

My Problem Description:

Syncing of my photos from my computer (Win7) to my iPad via iTunes suddenly started syncing some of my portrait photos in landscape mode (as seen in the iPad app “Fotos”). This did not happen to photos synced before September/October 2015. Those photos already resided in my “iPod Photo Cache” folder in the correct formate.

Problem Relevance:

The situation was extremely annoying since one of my favourite uses of the iPad was enjoying my photos streamed to my TV from the iPad using AppleTV. It is far less enjoyable with my head turned 90 deg.

Attempted Solution:

I did thoroughly describe the situation to the Apple support and they stated to have passed it up to Cupertino support. However, even after 4 months I did not get a solution so I tried it myself:

My analysis:

After intense analysis of EXIF tags (mostly using ExifTool and ExifToolGUI) I found the cause and a solution:

Cause: The problematic photos (JPGs) showed a mismatch of the orientation flags for the main picture and the embedded thumbnail. I could trace that back to my photo import handler (i.e. WIA-Loader) that losslessly turns portrait pictures based on their orientation flag and sets the orientation flag (i.e. IDF0:Orientation) to “Horizontal (normal)” afterwards. However, it leaves any embedded thumbnail including its thumbnail IDF1:Orientation flag untouched. This is not wrong in principle because picture and its associated thumbnail are still defined correctly on their own. That also is the reason why all my various photo programs on my PC have no problem with this situation at all. However iTunes seems to have changed its behaviour for orientation flag usage with a release in fall 2015: Before, it used the main picture flag (IDF0:Orientation) for the orientation of the main picture transferred to the iPad. Form that time on, it started using the thumbnail orientation flag (IDF1:Orientation) and applied it to the main picture. That led to the observed problems in those cases, where there is a mismatch between the two tags (IDF0 and IDF1). In addition, this behaviour is a bug since it handles JPG EXIF information wrong.

My solution:

1. I removed all thumbnail information for those JPGs with the described mismatch. (I used ExifTool with the “-ifd1:all=” command). Those were the pictures, that are displayed wrong on the iPad.
2. I removed all previously synced photos from the iPad using iTunes.
3. I deleted the iPod Photo Cache Folder on my PC.
4. I synced all photos with iTunes.

--> Everything is O.K. now for my entire photo collection.

I hope this helps one or the other out there.

Typo: IFD0 and IFD1 (not IDF...)

Thank you very much! I spent hours trying to figure this out. Your suggestion worked amazingly!

For those trying to figure this out, here is how you do it:

1. Download ExifTool
2. Copy to the temp directory
3. Rename to ExifTool.exe
4. Open a command prompt and change directory to the temp folder (cd c:\temp)
5. Run the following command using your picture directory: c:\Temp>exiftool.exe -ifd1:all= "c:\Digital Picuters\Disney 2011"
6. Delete the iPod cache folder - Lives in the digital picture directory, where your pictures are
7. Re-sync your pictures using iTunes

Hope this helps you!