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Thread: Why your photos show up sideways on SMC

  1. #1
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    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.
    20171011_155426.jpg Taken with the phone upright

    20171011_155419.jpg Taken with the phone with the left side up

    20171011_155414.jpg Taken with the phone upside down

    20171011_155409.jpg 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.
    Last edited by Lee Schierer; 10-11-2017 at 7:35 PM.
    Lee Schierer
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    It is critical to know what cell phone people have. Typically, iPhones seem to have more issues.

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    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).
    Mark McFarlane

  4. #4
    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?
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by Prashun Patel; 10-13-2017 at 11:32 AM.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane View Post
    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.
    rotated_left.jpg

    rotated_left_fixed.jpg

    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
    Last edited by John K Jordan; 10-13-2017 at 11:44 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by John K Jordan View Post
    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 McFarlane

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    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.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    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.
    Mark McFarlane

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    Quote Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane View Post
    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

  10. #10
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    This same problem shows up on multiple forums and happens with iPhones more frequently.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane View Post
    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
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    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

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    <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 View Post
    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>
    Last edited by Lee Schierer; 10-29-2017 at 9:21 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aaron Koehl View Post
    <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.
    Mark McFarlane

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by mark mcfarlane View Post
    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.
    Lee Schierer
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    My advice, comments and suggestions are free, but it costs money to run the site. If you found something of value here please give a little something back by becoming a contributor! Please Contribute

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