Something caused some of my build log photos to rotate

[6ohiocav]

Chuck,

I don't know if this is related, but did the recent changes made to the forum affect build logs. I just went through my log and noticed that a small number of photos have been rotated 90 degrees. I have no idea when this happened. I know that the photos were properly submitted and have been properly aligned for years. 

 

Is there a quick fix? Can I fix it using the editing tool? and if so, any suggestions on how to do it. I would not want to have to search my files (if i even have them) and reload the photos from scratch.

 

Thanks, 

[James H]

There's no way that adding the new forum theme has rotated your images. 

 

I really can't explain how that could've happened. The easiest thing to do is to edit the affected posts, delete the image and upload the correct orientation again.

[Gregory]

I've noticed this happening when the original photo in my camera was rotated before editing..

 

I have found that opening the photo in an editor, changing some minor detail, then saving it as a new image, corrects the problem.

[Matt H]

Some of my photos rotate 90 despite looking correct in the thumbnail when browsing my photos. If you're on a Windows machine you can open the photo with the default photo viewer. This has some basic editing capabilities, just click on edit in the upper right corner. Even if your photo is currently displaying in the correct orientation in the photo viewer, it is sometimes coded into the image that it was originally taken at a different camera orientation, hence why it rotates in some applications. In that edit mode, there is a button to rotate the photo, again even if it is already displaying correctly, just rotate it 4 times to get back to normal. Then save it, whether you choose to save it as a new photo or overwrite the original, doesn't matter. The photo will now be coded to display in the orientation you see when you save it. Should display correctly when you upload to those applications or sites that have previously displayed it incorrectly. This is the easiest "edit" to do without actually editing the photo, even though the end result appears the same as the original you are modifying the coded data in the photo regarding it's orientation.

 

As far as why or how it changed suddenly, that I can't say. It is possible the site got some soft of update or even the behind the scenes coding in the new theme that displays photos based on the orientation that is coded into the photo rather than "smartly" displaying it as intended. Meaning, I believe some software will recognize that if you turn your camera 90 degrees to switch from portrait to landscape, that was intentional and will display the image that way, despite the coding in the photo explicitly stating that the camera was rotated 90 degrees and should be displayed rotated.

 

Here is an article on the subject that may explain it better than I as to why some software does this. https://www.howtogeek.com/254830/why-your-photos-dont-always-appear-correctly-rotated/

[James H]

5 hours ago, Matt H said:

It is possible the site got some soft of update or even the behind the scenes coding in the new theme that displays photos based on the orientation that is coded into the photo rather than "smartly" displaying it as intended.

 

That's not the case at all. The gallery module, and also the forum itself, hasn't had an update now in a few months as we are currently operating the latest version. 

 

There have been some custom CSS mods made, but only to the new theme, and for controlling global font size.

[6ohiocav]

James,

 

I hate to beat a dead horse, but something caused many of my photos on my log to rotate. They were all true when i initially loaded them up and I am familiar with the suggestions made with Matt and Greg. I routinely open all photos in an editing program and make some minor change just to lock in the proper alignment.  All of these photos over the years were properly aligned. Now, something changed within the month. 

 

Sorry to bother everyone

[James H]

2 hours ago, 6ohiocav said:

James,

 

I hate to beat a dead horse, but something caused many of my photos on my log to rotate. They were all true when i initially loaded them up and I am familiar with the suggestions made with Matt and Greg. I routinely open all photos in an editing program and make some minor change just to lock in the proper alignment.  All of these photos over the years were properly aligned. Now, something changed within the month. 

 

Sorry to bother everyone

Please don't apologise, this is why this forum area exists.

 

So far, we've had no other instances of photos rotating by themselves, so it's quite odd. Can you send me a specific link?

[6ohiocav]

Thanks James,

 

Check out post #16 from my Niagara Build log for example. Nearly everyone of those photos randomly rotated. You can access the log below. Many of my posts now have altered photos.

[James H]

Something I found but knew nothing about is this:

 

Quote

The image is actually sideways but your device knows the intended orientation so it adds an orientation tag to the image. When you upload to sites that detect this, it is displayed with the correct orientation without having to edit.

 

This would, in theory, mean that the images will have rotated around the time they were originally uploaded, and certainly not just recently as there have been no revisions to the software that would make such a change, and this seems to be an isolated case.

 

I edited the first page of your log to correct, so all I can think of is that these will need to be manually altered and re-inserted into your posts.

 

[amateur]

It is not isolated, the last pic in my log also rotated.

but as it is long ago that I uploaded it, I don't know when it rotated.

It only happened to the pics that I made using my Iphone, manually rotated, and uploaded. When uploaded it had the orientation I gave to it, now it is back to its original orientation. No need to correct it, but just to letyou know that something changed (somewhere, sometime).

 

Jan

[James H]

2 minutes ago, amateur said:

It is not isolated, the last pic in my log also rotated.

but as it is long ago that I uploaded it, I don't know when it rotated.

It only happened to the pics that I made using my Iphone, manually rotated, and uploaded. When uploaded it had the orientation I gave to it, now it is back to its original orientation. No need to correct it, but just to letyou know that something changed (somewhere, sometime).

 

Jan

 

Thanks for the info.

 

What would be interesting is the last recorded date of images rotating. That might not be so easy to get, but I'm pretty sure it's not since we switched to v.4, although some clarification would be useful. 

[6ohiocav]

On 6/19/2020 at 3:22 PM, amateur said:

It only happened to the pics that I made using my Iphone, manually rotated, and uploaded. When uploaded it had the orientation I gave to it, now it is back to its original orientation. No need to correct it, but just to letyou know that something changed (somewhere, sometime)

Like Jan, all of my photos, some of which rotated, were taken by my I-phone after a manual correction prior to uploading. When i finished my build log in April of this year, I perused my log and don't remember seeing any alterations for what that is worth.

 

Thanks James for making the corrections. I will take care of the rest of the photos.

[robdurant]

Not sure if it's helpful, (and apologies if this is over-technical - I've tried to keep it simple) but speaking as an internet programmer, it might help to understand a few of the nuts and bolts? 

 

JPEG images (the ".jpg" format we tend to use) are saved by most cameras (and phones) with data embedded in the file called EXIF data... it contains all the information like the camera model, the image size, the colour profile of the photo, and also it CAN contain information on whether the image is rotated... it's a quick and easy way for the phone or camera to say - I've stored this landscape, but actually the camera was vertical, so it's 90 degrees to that...  without having to actually move the pixels round (a much more intensive task for a computer)

 

1. Depending on what you use to view the file, that exif data may or may not be respected... It usually will be on your home computer using the picture viewer... It may not be by your web browser... and the results will vary between windows / mac and different browsers... it isn't that the website server is getting things wrong - it's just how it looks on your computer.

 

2. When you modify the image - e.g. resize / re-save - depending on which application you use to do that (i.e. iPhone gallery / Windows Photo / Photoshop etc... / online resizer ) that EXIF data may or may not be included. Clearly if it is not included, then when that image is displayed the computer / phone displaying it has no way of knowing that originally it was intended to be rotated... 

 

Basically - if you want it to show the right way round, then don't trust EXIF - you need to force the computer / phone to actually rotate the image data (perhaps using GIMP/ Photoshop or equivalent), not just put a note in the EXIF data. That's the only 100% fool proof method. With that said, I've just updated the script I use to resize my photos to include the EXIF data when it resizes them (it wasn't before) and now the portrait images taken on my phone (which are stored landscape with 90 degree EXIF rotation) show up correctly.

 

Anyway - hopefully that gives some insight into the complexities of simply getting an image the right way round on a webpage.

 

And finally - thank you to all you wonderful people who do such a great job of maintaining this forum! You make a complex task look very simple, and I'm sure that takes a lot of behind the scenes effort. Much appreciated.

 

Rob

[mtaylor]

Per what Rob says...

 

I've found that if you're using Windows, just bring the image downloaded from the camera into Paint.  I usually resize them for MSW as my camera shots are too big.  When saved, all the EXIF data has been overwritten.

[6ohiocav]

Mark,

 

I did that for every photo I took in this log to make sure that the photo was straight. I agree with what Rob said, even if I don't fully understand it. All of the photos were aligned, and had been so for years, and then at some point in the last couple of months, they weren't.

 

At least that is how I saw them on my computer and my old browser. Can switching browsers to Chrome on my end have anything to do with this?

[mtaylor]

Good question about Chrome.  I don't think so.  I switch over to Chrome sometime ago but I do keep the latest MS Edge and Firefox and I"m not seeing this either.