Why your photos show up sideways on SMC

Here are four photos taken with my Samsung S4 mini cell phone. Note the orientation of the photo as you see it here on SMC and how the phone was oriented when the photo was taken. All these photos when viewed on the phone have the lighthouse upright.
Attachment 369441 Taken with the phone upright

Attachment 369440 Taken with the phone with the left side up

Attachment 369439 Taken with the phone upside down

Attachment 369438 Taken with the phone with the right side up

You can save yourself problems by always holding your cell phone so the top is up or by opening your photos in a photo editing program and changing the orientation before uploading them.

It is critical to know what cell phone people have. Typically, iPhones seem to have more issues.

iPhone photos display just fine on Mac OS X computers regardless of phone orientation when the picture is taken, but do not display correctly on SMC. So an SMC user has no idea which way a photo needs to be rotated to display correctly in SMC because it always displays fine on the Mac.

This is a known design issue with SMC's VBulletin software. The developers acknowledge that they ignore the metadata (see this post) telling them how to rotate the photo, and as of 2015 they don't see it as very important. They don't consider its a bug, it is 'working as designed' which is IMO stupid. They apparently think Apple should rotate the images and not use the EXIF metadata to tell other software to rotate the pictures.

For the time being, the only way to easily get correct results is to hold your phone vertical (portrait mode).

As a frequent offender, thanks for this Lee. I will add this method that works for me too:

Mail the pic to my Windows pc.
Drag photo to desktop.
Right click and select 'Edit with Photos'.
In Photos, click 'Save a Copy as' and overwrite the photo. You don't need to know the orientation, because it auto rotates when opening, so the copy ends up being the proper orientation for SMC upload. See?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane

for the time being, the only way to easily get correct results is to hold your phone vertical (portrait mode).

---

You should be able to fix the photos before posting. I've done this many times but didn't remember exactly what I did so I tried it again just now.

I downloaded the last of Lee's photos and show it here two ways: One is as downloaded - taking a nap. The second is after loading it into an image processing program, rotating CW, then saving as a new file.
Attachment 369576

Attachment 369577

I used Photoshop Elements on a Windows machine for this test. I used to do the same thing with ACDC and other software. Might also be able to edit the image EXIF properties to change the rotation data (seems like I used to do this years ago but my memory cells are aging.)

(The lower image displays correctly for me. Is it rotated incorrectly on anyone's display?)

JKJ

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by John K Jordan

You should be able to fix the photos before posting. I've done this many times but didn't remember exactly what I did so I tried it again just now....

---

I think you missed the original point of my post. If you are a Mac OS X and iPhone user, regardless of how your phone is positioned (any of 4 possible orientations) the pic always looks correct on you Mac using any Apple software: Preview iPhoto, Photos, and Aperture).

So the only way to know if there is a problem is to upload the pic to SMC first, see which way it needs to be rotated, now rotate it on your Mac so the original image is now crooked on your Mac, then rename it and upload it again to SMC, deleting the original upload.

I hold my iPhone in any of the 4 possible orientations, depending on where I want the camera lens to be relative to how I am shooting the pic (for closeups this can matter). So for a landscape pic it might need either a +90 or -90 rotation, and I don't currently have an easy way of knowing which way to rotate it until I upload the pic to SMC.

I understand this is not an SMC problem, it is a well known problem with the vBulletin software.

If you stick to only using two orientations you could just remember, always rotate landscapes +/-90 degrees (I forget which one). That's probably what I'll do in the future.

Mark, I guess I've not run into this because I process all photos in Lightroom prior to uploading anywhere, so that must be dealing with the issue for me, despite being 100% MacOS for upload and iOS for most photos. (My Nikon D750 doesn't get to the shop much...)

Good to know about the VB issue...and not surprising. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jim Becker

Mark, I guess I've not run into this because I process all photos in Lightroom prior to uploading anywhere, so that must be dealing with the issue for me, despite being 100% MacOS for upload and iOS for most photos. (My Nikon D750 doesn't get to the shop much...)

Good to know about the VB issue...and not surprising. :)

---

It is reasonable that Lightroom rotates on import and removes the rotation metadata. For SMC pics, I just use Airdrop to send pictures to my Mac, then upload direct to SMC. They don't touch any software other than occasionally Preview where I recompress really large files.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane

I think you missed the original point of my post. If you are a Mac OS X and iPhone user, regardless of how your phone is positioned (any of 4 possible orientations) the pic always looks correct on you Mac...

---

I was offering a possible fix that may be helpful to someone.

JKJ

This same problem shows up on multiple forums and happens with iPhones more frequently.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane

It is reasonable that Lightroom rotates on import and removes the rotation metadata. For SMC pics, I just use Airdrop to send pictures to my Mac, then upload direct to SMC. They don't touch any software other than occasionally Preview where I recompress really large files.

---

I'm too anal to send any photo directly to the Internet most of the time. I haz my needz to editz dem... LOL

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jim Becker

I'm too anal to send any photo directly to the Internet most of the time. I haz my needz to editz dem... LOL

---

Same here! I can't remember ever posting a photo without first loading it into PhotoShop for sizing and compressing. (One forum I visit has a firm 100k limit) And once it is loaded, I simply can't resist quickly adjusting the levels. Then I might as well straighten. Hmm... That background needs cropping...

JKJ

<p>
I should add, if you resize your photos to the proper size limits before uploading them, then vBulletin will leave them alone. Thus, you won't have any issues with rotation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by John K Jordan

Same here! I can't remember ever posting a photo without first loading it into PhotoShop for sizing and compressing. (One forum I visit has a firm 100k limit) And once it is loaded, I simply can't resist quickly adjusting the levels. Then I might as well straighten. Hmm... That background needs cropping... JKJ

---

</p>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aaron Koehl

<p>
I should add, if you resize your photos to the proper size limits before uploading them, then vBulletin will leave them alone. Thus, you won't have any issues with rotation. </p>

---

Actually, I think Apple's Preview and Aperture applications all still leave the meta data 'rotate' field intact when a resizing picture, and they still show wrong in vBulletin. That's been my experience.

Also, SMC's vBulletin implementation seems to automatically resize (i.e. file size reduction) pictures when you upload them, again my experience when uploading <1MB files.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane

I think you missed the original point of my post. If you are a Mac OS X and iPhone user, regardless of how your phone is positioned (any of 4 possible orientations) the pic always looks correct on you Mac using any Apple software: Preview iPhoto, Photos, and Aperture).

---

Even an I-phone has a top and if you take your photos with the top of the phone up, SMC won't rotate them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee Schierer

Even an I-phone has a top and if you take your photos with the top of the phone up, SMC won't rotate them.

---

Thanks Lee. That's not my experience. Here's an iPhone 5 photo, shot in (vertical) portrait mode, with the power button and image sensor at the top of the phone. It is rotated by SMC 90 CCW.

Attachment 383236

For landscape photos, I need to put the volume buttons, which control the 'shutter release', on the bottom of the phone to get it to display in SMC correctly. To me, 'shutter release on the bottom of the camera' is 'upside down'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane

For landscape photos, I need to put the volume buttons, which control the 'shutter release', on the bottom of the phone to get it to display in SMC correctly. To me, 'shutter release on the bottom of the camera' is 'upside down'.

---

So now you know where the top of the phone is. All you need to do is move to Australia and your phone will be right side up...:D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee Schierer

So now you know where the top of the phone is. All you need to do is move to Australia and your phone will be right side up...:D

---

I just finished a FaceTime session with my daughter who moved to Sydney a few weeks ago. I'll ask her to test this theory.

I do have it figured out, as long as I stick to landscape orientation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lee schierer

so now you know where the top of the phone is. All you need to do is move to australia and your phone will be right side up...:d

---

roflol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like it's still a multi-step process here, which I'm not willing to do just to post pictures here when they can be posted multiple other places with no issues.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by John K Jordan

Same here! I can't remember ever posting a photo without first loading it into PhotoShop for sizing and compressing. (One forum I visit has a firm 100k limit) And once it is loaded, I simply can't resist quickly adjusting the levels. Then I might as well straighten. Hmm... That background needs cropping...

JKJ

---

If you are not a Photoshop user using Photoshop just to resize pictures is a bit of overkill.

If you are a Windows user I recommend Microsoft's own FREE Windows Power Toys for resizing pictures. It is MUCH quicker than using Photoshop to resize and also FREE!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win.../image-resizer

It is available through the Right-Click menu in Windows Explorer. And it takes all of about a second to resize a picture:

Attachment 481158

Attachment 481159

Not only is it FREE it also does not contain any spyware or addware in the application like most "free" software does.



I prefer the following configuration which will create a resized image named "[original image name] - Large.jpg"
Attachment 481160


Even with resizing and rotating pictures on my workstation they still don't post properly on sawmillcreek a good percentage of the time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Michael Schuch

If you are not a Photoshop user using Photoshop just to resize pictures is a bit of overkill

---

I’m a hardcore Photoshop user, used it for decades in my work. These days I can’t justify the subscription fee for the latest versions so I bought Photoshop Elements, inexpensive, has most of the functionality, does everything I want.

There are also free online utilities that resize and compress images. One wood forum recommended https://picresize.com/, quick and simple.

JKJ

So if we rout our pics thru a server at 0 lat, 0 longitude will they become unhinged and just spin down the toilet, and which way will they spin?