Sideways photos

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Gee.S
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Sideways photos

#1

Post by Gee.S »

There has been a flurry of sideways photos posted here recently, and that is a trend we would like to reverse. I understand these are uploaded from phones. One possible way to address this is to upload photos that are wider than they are tall. It seems it is usually portraits rather than landscapes that are oriented improperly by your phones. If you upload a photo and notice it is improperly oriented, please delete and try again. Thank you.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Azuleja
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Re: Sideways photos

#2

Post by Azuleja »

Thank you for posting this. I've found it to be a problem with square photos as well. The only thing that helped was manually resizing first.
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DesertDweller
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Re: Sideways photos

#3

Post by DesertDweller »

Methinks part of the problem is that certain operating systems who shall remain unnamed <cough> Win 8 <cough>, are now using the EXIF data to display images correctly, regardless of the orientation in the file. That is, you take it sideways, but the file is annotated to indicate the orientation. Newer operating systems will show the picture right side up (i.e. correctly), but many other places that can't or don't use the EXIF data will show it the way it is stored (i.e. incorrectly).

I've noticed this when pulling photos off a camera with XP Pro vs. a newer laptop with Windows 8.1, because the same picture will show up sideways in XP Pro and require me to re-orient it, while Windows 8 displays it correctly right off the bat. While that feature of Win 8 is convenient, the rub is that when you upload your image somewhere, more than likely, it shows sideways, leaving you to ask why it looked fine on your computer but not on, say, the forum.

Annoying but that seems to be the culprit, at least some of the time. In my case, I turned off automatic orientation in the camera I use to take my plant photos. Now, what you see is what you get (as far as uploading anyway). Not ideal, but since I don't use it for much else, that works for me. As mentioned above, you can get around this problem by re-sizing or re-orienting and then reversing it (i.e. make it look wrong and then return it to the way it was).

As Paul Lutus once said, thanks to advancing in operating systems, there are now more and more things we can no longer do with our computers. :P
Kwie2011
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Re: Sideways photos

#4

Post by Kwie2011 »

I just posted a couple sideways photos from my iPhone. The thumbnails that appeared on the listing page next to the file I chose were oriented correctly, but they still uploaded sideways. I tried twice, and both times they appeared correct on the phone and on the upload screen, but sideways after submitting.
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Re: Sideways photos

#5

Post by Gee.S »

Portraits, rather than landscapes?
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#6

Post by Kwie2011 »

Unsure what you're asking. The photos were taken vertically, and we're oriented vertically in the thumbnail on the file page, but were then turned to landscape orientation in the final display. I don't know why they'd be oriented vertically/correctly in one view and not another.
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Re: Sideways photos

#7

Post by Gee.S »

Because that's what phones uploads do. Best way to avoid it is either upload from a PC rather than a phone, or upload landscape- rather than portrait-oriented photos from a phone, as I suggest in the OP.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Azuleja
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Re: Sideways photos

#8

Post by Azuleja »

I have this problem on my phone regardless of image shape or layout. It happens in landscape and also square. Manual resizing fixes it but does take extra steps.
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Re: Sideways photos

#9

Post by Gee.S »

You mean landscapes are reoriented as portraits? I've never seen that. Always the other way around.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#10

Post by Azuleja »

Like this
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Re: Sideways photos

#11

Post by Gee.S »

That's square, so neither portrait nor landscape. I'm trying to figure out why the forum didn't resize that. What do you have that takes perfectly square pics? That's so weird...
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#12

Post by Azuleja »

Oops, I thought that was landscape for some reason. You're right, I just tried an actual landscape and it worked. A portion hangs off the right side but it wasn't flipped.

I take most of my photos on my phone and can choose various aspect ratios. I often choose square.
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Re: Sideways photos

#13

Post by Gee.S »

I bet if you default to one pixel wider than tall, it would solve upload issues -- here and elsewhere.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#14

Post by Viegener »

I discovered that if you open your portrait format (narrow) cell phone pics on your computer and rotate them 4 times to the left (or right) and then save them, they will always come out right on here. Otherwise everything is posted in landscape (wide) format.
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Re: Sideways photos

#15

Post by DesertDweller »

Another option is to disable to orientation option in your device. Did this on our camera that I use for taking plant pics. This way, you take it landscape, saves landscape. You take it portrait, saves sideways, but you see it that way on the device and on your PC so you know to rotate before you upload and no confusion about how it will be represented from one place to another. Food for thought!
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Re: Sideways photos

#16

Post by toditd »

Gee.S,

I wrote a potential post a little while ago to give some background on the sideways image problem, but I haven't posted it. It was getting long, would probably bore most readers, and it didn't present a solution other than what you are doing to get posters to resave the image, which really isn't an optimal solution.

If anyone is interested I could post my ramblings, but very briefly, the problem with sideways photos is caused by the way mobile devices store an orientation flag in the image's EXIF data instead of transforming (rotating) the actual camera's sensor data into the "correct" orientation when the camera saves the image file.

I have since ran across a recent topic in a phpBB Discussion Community Forum which has a possible solution for the sideways image problem. It might be worth checking out the topic to see if it might work for Agaveville.
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Re: Sideways photos

#17

Post by Gee.S »

Thanks, that would be a simple and elegant solution, were we running the latest version of phpBB. But Agaveville is heavily modified on several fronts and all mods would be lost were we to upgrade. Further, I cannot sort out how or where to place the code in our older version.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#18

Post by toditd »

I figured there might be a version issue and I hear you on the mods issue. Believe me, I know all too well how that goes! Well, it was worth a shot.
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Re: Sideways photos

#19

Post by Xanthoria »

Viegener wrote:I discovered that if you open your portrait format (narrow) cell phone pics on your computer and rotate them 4 times to the left (or right) and then save them, they will always come out right on here. Otherwise everything is posted in landscape (wide) format.
This works great for me with an iPhone and an iMac - i opened the pics in Preview, spun them 4 clicks, and saved. Voila!
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Re: Sideways photos

#20

Post by Gee.S »

Why your iPhone pictures are sideways (and how to fix them)

Rotate Mailer

Is this just an iPhone thing? I've tried for sideways pics on my Droid, and it refuses to do it.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#21

Post by Luc »

Xanthoria wrote:
Viegener wrote:I discovered that if you open your portrait format (narrow) cell phone pics on your computer and rotate them 4 times to the left (or right) and then save them, they will always come out right on here. Otherwise everything is posted in landscape (wide) format.
This works great for me with an iPhone and an iMac - i opened the pics in Preview, spun them 4 clicks, and saved. Voila!
That's the easiest way, indeed.

With XnView you can directly access to the EXIF data and change some data as you want, in our case, orientation interests us, I noted that the number 6 correspond to a sideway photo and the number 1 to a right side up photo.
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Re: Sideways photos

#22

Post by Stan »

I was shocked to see one of my point and shoot camera photos load sideways ( Washingtonia palm). First time ever and not since. Its upright in my photo files.
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Re: Sideways photos

#23

Post by abborean »

Am thinking that this is a problem with something on the forum servers way of doing things. Has anyone noticed this on any other forum? I only post to the fossil forum, facebook (rarely) and here. I just turn my head sideways when I see them and it doesn't bother me and Believe me when I say I'm not criticizing this fabulous forum.
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Re: Sideways photos

#24

Post by Gee.S »

The real problem is a bug in iPhone, but newer forum software has routines to compensate. Updating forum software is a fearsome proposition. Agaveville would lose all my cusomizations, and I would be back to square one.
Agave
"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Sideways photos

#25

Post by abborean »

I wouldn't want to change a thing and wasn't criticizing. Stan mentioned that it happened with a point and shoot camera. Back in the day on mainframe computers there was something called "zero zero" in a digital image. The image started there and it was the upper left. I imagine the I-Phone and Stan's camera have a fixed "zero zero" point for the start of the image which is causing this. I can't imagine how any software would correct for this but that's the magic of our world today. Perhaps some devices sense the upper left when the device is turned sideways?
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