Rotating Images

There's been a few issues with pictures being rotated when posted from a mobile phone.

Apparently this relates to the way phone OS's code their image sizes. Some applications (and clearly this is one) then reads the information in a transposed form, in other words they read the X-axis dimension as the Y-Axis and vice versa. Thus the photo gets rotated on upload. I think this happens when the phone is held in a particular orientation as it doesn't happen every time.

We're looking into it to see what, if anything can be done. In the meantime if this problem does occur, the best solution is to download the photo to PC first, rotate it 4 times or modify it in some way, re-save it and then upload.

Modern technology! I used to get that problem after six pints of Worthington E

Drinking aside......

It seems that the problem is that mobile devices save the images using the standard landscape orientation, but then add some ‘EXIF’ information into the image code that tells the viewer the rotation of the image. Unfortunately when the images are uploaded and resized for browser, this information is ignored and stripped from the images (stripping this data is standard for web images as it contains quite a bit of information that could cause privacy concerns if made available).

I've just done a test and discovered that if, when taking the picture, I hold my iphone in landscape orientation with the home button to the right (which is possibly the natural way to hold for right handed people), the picture uploads fine.

If I hold the phone vertically in portrait orientation then the image is rotated left into landscape thus the image ends up on its side (unless viewing on my iPhone, in which case it shows fine).

If I hold the phone with the home button to the left the picture is rotated either left twice or right once. Either way it ends up upside down.

So, the trick is, if uploading directly from your iPhone make sure you take the picture in landscape orientation with the home button to the right! Otherwise you will need to post process on your PC/Laptop (by making some small adjustment before re-saving) before upload.

Meanwhile we'll keep looking for a fix.

Is this the reason why we see so many portrait format videos on TV and the web? They were 'filmed' in landscape but the phone software rotated it?

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

Is this the reason why we see so many portrait format videos on TV and the web? They were 'filmed' in landscape but the phone software rotated it?

No, they were filmed in portrait as it is the easiest way to hold a phone in one hand. Filming when holding your phone in landscape gives full width widescreen coverage.

Thanks Dietmar.

I thought that might be the case. We get a lot of phone videos on Thai TV News of 'on the spot' action and it is very irritating viewed in portrait format. A case of educating the camera person!

They do Peter K, that's point. They add the EXIF data that tells the smart phone which way around it is, but this gets stripped off on upload. That's why we have the problem.

I only point out the position of the home button as a work around to avoid upside down photos.