Any way to stop Photos from auto-straightening when you edit photos?

Lately, when I edit photos in Apple Photos, the images are getting auto-straightened. I get that Apple is trying to be helpful, but for sports photos it's decidedly not helpful, and adds more clicks and steps when editing. This adds more work when going through large batches of photos.


I get that most people appreciate this feature, but it would be nice to have a way to turn it off for those times when it's not desirable. Any help?

iOS 11.4.1

Posted on Jul 18, 2018 5:45 PM

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7 replies

Jul 19, 2018 6:26 AM in response to Mike Smart1

Lately, when I edit photos in Apple Photos, the images are getting auto-straightened. I get that Apple is trying to be helpful, but for sports photos it's decidedly not helpful, and adds more clicks and steps when editing.

When Photos makes a "not helpful" automatic straightening, when I open the crop tool, I immediately click the reset button at the bottom of the crop pane. The Crop tool will remain open, but the straighten effect will be removed.

Jul 19, 2018 9:43 AM in response to Mike Smart1

How is it auto straightening? What types of edits are you making? Can you post screenshots of before and after? I can't duplicate the problem.


As a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it?


Also log into another user account on your Mac and run the same test. Results?d


Lastly, noot into Safe Mode, Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode, and try from there.

User uploaded file

Jul 20, 2018 4:03 PM in response to Old Toad

It's not a problem/bug. It's a feature intended to make things easier when you enter edit mode by automatically straightening photos that appear to have been taken at an angle. It's working as intended. In normal photos, it probably won't need to auto-straighten, so you won't see it happen unless you edit a photo that's been taken crooked, and then you probably appreciate the auto-straightening. It's a good thing in these cases.


However, in soccer photos (and other sports I assume), where athletes are at angles (falling, cutting, shifting weight, etc.) and field lines are often at angles, more than half of the photos I edit get auto-straightened to some degree. It's decidedly unhelpful in these cases, because the photo is at the correct angle. The auto-straightening AI just doesn't think it's correct.


If I were doing a half dozen photos it's not a big deal, but when you're processing a couple of hundred, it's annoying not to be able to turn it off.

Jul 22, 2018 9:38 AM in response to Mike Smart1

I've also experienced this when cropping wildlife photos. I just did a test on a photo of a lighthouse that was perfectly centered and aligned. However it is framed by two palm trees, each of which is slightly tilted. I selected crop and guess what? Yes the trees were auto-aligned (as best as possible) and the lighthouse was tilted four degrees.


So your description is spot on but I believe that not providing a way to turn off this behavior is a problem/bug. As a matter of fact I think I might prefer an Align button on the page so that it's a manual operation. Regardless, I'll also post feedback to Apple on this.

Jul 19, 2018 6:30 AM in response to léonie

Ah, I see. Thanks! That's faster than what I've been doing, yes. Good idea. It isn't ideal because it's an extra click and extra time but it is faster than what I've been doing up to now, which was to use the angle view to manually adjust the image. Sometimes I've noticed that I don't always realize the image has been auto-straightened until I've already started cropping it, but in cases where I see it right away hitting that reset button will be quicker.


I think I'm going to check out Lightroom as an alternative though, just to see if I like it better.

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Any way to stop Photos from auto-straightening when you edit photos?

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