iPod Touch photo orientation on mac

[Relentlos]

I did a search but didn't see anything mentioning this.

I took some photos with my ipod touch (4th gen iOS 4.2.1), and I have a strange issue.

I transferred the photos to my mac (OS X 10.4.11), and the thumbnails show the photo as being vertical (Portrait), the image viewers I've used show them as being Vertical, but when I go to upload to one to facebook, it uploads a picture that is turned 90 degrees to the right. The thumbnail showing in the facebook uploader is also horizontal.

The even stranger aspect is that when I attempted to correct it by "Saving As PNG" while upright in the image viewer -- the resulting photo turns 90 degrees to the right (as it was shown in facebook). If I attempt to rotate it and save, it turns back over. To make things even stranger -- facebook shows that horizontal image as being vertical, so it did fix it in a way.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

 

[Maui]

Can you clarify what software you are using -- when you say that you transfer the photos to your Mac, do you mean using iPhoto? When you say facebook uploader, do you mean uploading to facebook using your browser?

 

[Relentlos]

Can you clarify what software you are using -- when you say that you transfer the photos to your Mac, do you mean using iPhoto? When you say facebook uploader, do you mean uploading to facebook using your browser?

I just put them on the desktop, I don't use iPhoto. I opened them using both Preview.app and JustLooking.app. I used JustLooking to save as a .png file.

The facebook uploader is via the browser (Firefox 3.6.16).


I'm guessing it's something to do with the metadata or something saved to the files themselves. I'm surprised no one else seems to have had an issue.

I've attached a photo to test out

edit:
The uploader on this site also shows it flipped 90 degrees, and the photo shows as being turned despite being upright in my image browsers and finder.

 

[Maui]

In general, when you rotate a picture in an Apple application (and many others) the picture isn't really rotated; instead, it is just rotated within that application using an EXIF flag. This is to avoid loss of quality if the image is truly rotated, which requires re-saving the image. Most cameras now include auto-rotation for shots taken in portrait orientation as well, so things can get a little screwed up.

When you upload the file to this or another website, you are seeing the file's "true" rotation -- in this case, sideways -- because the website ignores the EXIF rotation flag.

There are all sorts of programs out there that will handle this (more or less) automatically for you, including iPhoto. Basically, you need to set the rotation you want before you upload the photo to a website, and you need to do that with something other than an EXIF flag. With iPhoto, import the photo, get it the way you want it, export it to your hard drive, and then upload it. Or, upload it directly to Facebook from within iPhoto.

 

[Relentlos]

In general, when you rotate a picture in an Apple application (and many others) the picture isn't really rotated; instead, it is just rotated within that application using an EXIF flag. This is to avoid loss of quality if the image is truly rotated, which requires re-saving the image. Most cameras now include auto-rotation for shots taken in portrait orientation as well, so things can get a little screwed up.

I see, so it's similar to how Quicktime Pro does not actually save audio or picture color changes to the files themselves.

The strange thing is that the JustLooking photo app normally tells me it may lose quality when I rotate, so it would actually save the file with whatever orientation I choose to make it. It just didn't work for these.

I just tested it in Preview.app, and it seems to work when I rotate and re-save from preview.

I've never had an image issue like this before.