Help...attachments odd problem w rotation

[Dr. Dave 4u]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask for help with my problem.

I take my orchid pics with my iPhone, lets say portrait or vertical format.

Then email them to my desk top mac where I download them. They look fine.

Then I write my post and attach the pic...
When I preview my post the pic is always rotated 90' to the left and is now sideways or landscape view.

So I delete it form the post's preview, open the pic on my mac in "Preview" app where it looks fine. Then using the rotate tool I rotate it four times bringing it back to the vertical where it started. I save the changes to the pic file. (changes ? its still the same vertical pic!)

Then I upload it on the orchid board, attach it to the preview and the re preview it and its fine so then I just post.

Anyone have any idea why I have to rotate the pic 360' back to the way it was and then it posts properly?

I am finding this more mysterious than the orchids life cycle!!

?????????

[Dusty Ol' Man]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dave 4u

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask for help with my problem.

I take my orchid pics with my iPhone, lets say portrait or vertical format.

Then email them to my desk top mac where I download them. They look fine.

Then I write my post and attach the pic...
When I preview my post the pic is always rotated 90' to the left and is now sideways or landscape view.

So I delete it form the post's preview, open the pic on my mac in "Preview" app where it looks fine. Then using the rotate tool I rotate it four times bringing it back to the vertical where it started. I save the changes to the pic file. (changes ? its still the same vertical pic!)

Then I upload it on the orchid board, attach it to the preview and the re preview it and its fine so then I just post.

Anyone have any idea why I have to rotate the pic 360' back to the way it was and then it posts properly?

I am finding this more mysterious than the orchids life cycle!!

?????????

It seems this is a peculiarity of this site. I've dealt with it too.
There are several posts somewhere dealing with this, but I'll offer the one I use from my phone. There is an app called Postimage. Upload your photo to the app, scroll down and choose the copy button that says "hotlink for forums", then come here and paste that link. Your photo will appear in your message.

---------- Post added at 11:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:03 AM ----------

I switched back to my phone to show how the image will appear using the linkm

[camille1585]

It's a bug that appeared in one of the last forum updates (many years ago) and there's nothing we can do about it and you aren't doing anything wrong. Over the years I've gotten used to having to turn my head to look at vertical photos!

One apparent 'fix' is to open the photo on your computer in editing software, rotate it out and back into vertical position and save. It rewrite something in the photo code which the forum them understands as 'post this vertically'. I haven't tried it yet since I usually post bbcode from my photo website.

[Dr. Dave 4u]

Hi,
Thats what I thought, my wife is a software engineer and I showed her and she felt it was a bug somewhere.
I told her as long as the bug is not in my orchids its ok with me!!

[SouthPark]

The rotated images (if any) seen on orchidboard is probably not a bug as such. But is instead the orchidboard forum software isn't doing some processing on the photo to make some amendments to the orientation information of that photo.

In cell-phone pics ...... the actual 'UP' direction is generally the right-hand-side LONG edge of the phone. It means - having the right-hand-side long edge pointing straight upward to the sky is considered to be 'normal'.

Holding the phone vertically while taking a shot is sort of like tilting the 'up' direction 90 degrees clockwise. The cell-phone has orientation sensors. And the orientation information is stored with the pic. So 'vertical' pics taken with the phone will come out appearing horizontal - because the actual 'up' direction is not the vertical direction for many cell-phones.

So image viewing software can tap into that orientation information (embedded in the photo data) and allow the viewing software to re-orientate the image so that it becomes displayed in the way we want it. Or ----- some image editing software can look at the orientation information, and then alter that orientation information (permanently) ----- such as making the 'vertical' direction become the 'new' UP direction.

The processing software that I mention at this link here (link) changes the 'up' direction permanently - but the software runs in MS Windows systems for now.

Also - the reason why the pics 'look' like they're in the 'correct' orientation when viewed in the cell-phone photo-gallery ----- is because the cell-phone software looks at the orientation information, and it just graphically displays the image in the 'correct' orientation - without actually modifying the orientation information stored within the photo's file.

[Dr. Dave 4u]

Wow..your so knowledgable !!!
Are you a software developer yourself?
For me, I just found that on the mac, I'd open the pic in Preview, rotate it 4 times back to vertical as it was , save changes and then it posts vertically....not sure what that changes i the metadata but must be something?
Just for fun, any ideas as to what might change in the file or its metadata?
Now you have me curious !!!
Thanks

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dave 4u

Wow..your so knowledgable !!!
Are you a software developer yourself?

DD ----- I'm not a software developer. Part of our schooling involved some computing, so that helped me to just be able to some intermediate type programming. These days - I think the schools make everybody need to do some programming.

With the orientation information in these phone-pics ...... I forgot to mention that the stored orientation information is based on what the orientation sensor was providing at the time of the shot.

So if the photographer with the cell-phone takes a 'vertical' position shot (with samsung/apple etc logo facing upward), then the stored orientation information will be a code equivalent to 90 degrees clockwise. Why 90 degrees clockwise? It's because holding the phone with the right-hand long side of the phone pointing upward is the actual 'UP' direction. So holding the phone in the 'general vertical' direction (eg. with the samsung or apple etc. logo facing upward) will make the sensor record a 90 degrees clockwise tilt.

That sort of information is stored within the pic file itself. The information basically tells us which orientation the phone was actually held when the pic was taken. So knowing that information allows software to :

1) 'automatically' display the photo with the 'correct' orientation that us humans want to see. This is done without altering the photo file at all.

OR

2) automatically check the orientation information, and then alter the orientation information in the photo itself - alter it permanently ------ so that the new orientation information will be changed - so that every image viewer will just display the image in the 'correct' orientation.

OR

3) Using a photo editor software like photoshop etc to manually rotate the image ----- rotate it so that it looks 'normal' to us. When the photo-edited image is saved ----- the 'UP' direction will be exactly as we see it with our eyes.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dave 4u

Just for fun, any ideas as to what might change in the file or its metadata?
Now you have me curious !!!
Thanks

The metadata section will contain codes. Some camera pics will have more information than others. And not always in the same order of information from camera to other different kind of camera. But they all contain information such as orientation information. That orientation information is typically coded as numbers ----- (in the relevant section of the metadata) ---- like '1' or '2' or '3' or '4' or even up to number '8'. I think that usually there are only four relevant values --- that represent 0 degree rotation (relative to the pre-defined UP direction), 90 degree, -90 degree and 180 degree (upside down).

Each one is a code. The number '1' (if that's what is seen in the metadata for the orientation) usually means row number zero of an image is at the TOP, and column number zero is on the LEFT. That tells us that when we display the image on any basic picture viewer, then it would just come out looking 'normal' to us.

But if the photographer had rotated the camera from the camera's pre-defined 'UP' position (ie. rotated counter-clockwise by the equivalent of 90 degree, or rotated clockwise by 90 degree, or even rotated 180 degree --- ie upside down ----- then the associated code will be in that metadata. So - as long as you know where those values are in the metadata ----- and as long as you have a meta-data editor ------ and as long as you know the full details of the orientation information.

For example ---- my Samsung phone has a 6, 1, 3, 8 code system. Altering the value (ie. changing the number with meta-data editors will alter the orientation information.

For my Samsung phone - a '6' would mean the image displayed using a basic viewer would come out left-rotated by 90 degrees. This is assuming that the right-hand-side long edge of the phone is the general photo-taking orientation - ie. right-side long edge facing upwards to the sky is 'general' direction (but we know that a lot of people hold the phone vertically, which is fine - but is not the 'general' reference direction). And a '1' would mean the image would be displayed unrotated - normal. A '3' would mean upside down image. And a '8' would mean the image displayed would appear right-rotated by 90 degrees. Knowing the orientation information allows us to use our own program (software) to graphically rotate an image to the 'normal' position, and then also update the orientation information (such as to change it to a '1'), and then re-save the image automatically to a new filename. The new image file would then always be displayed correctly with any basic image viewer.

Naturally - there can be other situations - where we point a camera up toward the sky or something. So I'll ignore that situation heheh. But I wouldn't be surprised if some phones will provide 3 dimension information along with the meta-data.

[estación seca]

I suspect the issue is that newer phone camera software isn't recording the orientation data the way it used to. When I posted photos from an old phone to this version of OB the orientation was always correct. Using a newer phone it is not correct. I don't know whether EXIF standards changed or phone software designers got lazy.

[Mr.Fakename]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.