Pictures taken from iPhone land sideways on computer

[Brigitte]

Bridgitte:

I really think something is wrong with your phone. I sent 2 pictures (from my camera roll) to a Blackberry (via email with the smallest size), one in portrait and one in landscape. Both are received by the BB ok.
But, I did not jb. Is yours jb?

I think that sending a picture from an iphone to another phone (in your case a blackberry, which is also a smart phone) everything is alright (they talk to each other). The problem comes when the photo is being sent from the iphone to a computer. Try sending your photos from your iphone via email to your email address or any of your friends email addresses and solicit feedback. I did so many tests..... asked for feedback. Negative results.

I also tested the iphone to iphone thing and it was perfect. I also sent a picture to apple technical support and guess what it was perfect (they are the apple people) and of course they said it came upright....

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[krist8]

The problem comes when the photo is being sent from the iphone to a computer. Try sending your photos from your iphone via email to your email address

I did send the same 2 photos from my iphone4 to my computer via email. when I opened the email (I use yahoo mail), one photo showed an upright thumbnail as attachment , one showed sideways. But, who looks at the thumbnail attached to email? I normally download them and open them, and both showed ok. The one sideway thumbnail is rotated by the photo viewer.

What email do you and your friends use?

[Brigitte]

A tip for video: Hold the camera in landscape position, with the camera lens on the top left and the shutter on your right. My first video was in portrait mode, when I realized what I had done, I turned ti into landscape position with the lens on the bottom right and the shutter on the left. My movie was upside down when viewed, duh! LOL

Looks like Dannyboy had trouble with jailbreaking. I have had NONE! Just do your research first, and wait for 4.2 to be out for a week or two before attempting it. Otherwise your probably asking for trouble. LOL

That is an excellent idea to hold the camera in landscape position, with the camera lens on the top left and the shutter on your right (at first I had to figure out what the shutter is - the home button, right). I just did that, and you actually get to see more on the screen when you replay it. Unfortunately, I have already sent a video I took in the portrait position and it gives you the video in portrait positon and does not fill the screen. I am learning. It is just that you hold your phone a certain way (vertical) but when you are taking a video it is best to turn it to the side (horizontal). Thanks Pocobear.

[Brigitte]

The problem comes when the photo is being sent from the iphone to a computer. Try sending your photos from your iphone via email to your email address

I did send the same 2 photos from my iphone4 to my computer via email. when I opened the email (I use yahoo mail), one photo showed an upright thumbnail as attachment , one showed sideways. But, who looks at the thumbnail attached to email? I normally download them and open them, and both showed ok. The one sideway thumbnail is rotated by the photo viewer.

What email do you and your friends use?

You know when you take a photo, two pictures of the same photo are automatically saved. I read up on it...one is the normal one and the other one is the HDR (High Dynamic Range)version. You can change in settings if you just want one of them saved (default is two). I actually changed it in settings to just the HDR version but then I talked to someone and he told me that you should pick out which one you actually like better and then delete the other one. Acutally I could not figure out why it saved two to my camera roll when I only took one picture. I went back to having it save the two pictures and then I make my own decision which one to delete. I think that is why you sent two of them. In fact, I was told also by friends that they received two pictures and I thought I only sent one. They kind of go together if you don't delete one. If anyone out there agrees with me on that, I would welcome it.

I have an aol, gmail and yahoo email address. I communicate a lot with Europe and they have all kinds of strange addresses. But I tried with all of my addresses and thought it was the Internet provider but I learned that it has to do with meta data and what the other software at the other end reads it as and does with it. I still have to learn more about it. Meta data is also known as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format). I will read up on it some more. I want to know this subject well and take full advantage of the iphone and know what I am doing.

[DannyBoy]

A tip for video: Hold the camera in landscape position, with the camera lens on the top left and the shutter on your right. My first video was in portrait mode, when I realized what I had done, I turned ti into landscape position with the lens on the bottom right and the shutter on the left. My movie was upside down when viewed, duh! LOL

Looks like Dannyboy had trouble with jailbreaking. I have had NONE! Just do your research first, and wait for 4.2 to be out for a week or two before attempting it. Otherwise your probably asking for trouble. LOL

Nope, no problem at all with the jailbreak. Just can be confusing because things can be installed that don't work/are confusing. Especially for a new user. Who wants a phone that's so complicated or something you installed made it so complicated you can't use it....

[sharonfrommpls]

Others in this thread have explained why this happens. The iPhone (at least since OS 4) uses EXIF metadata to keep track of the desired orientation for the picture. Many Windows utilities (including the default Windows Picture viewer in Windows XP!) do not know how to interpret EXIF tags. So the problem is actually in Windows, not the iPhone.

However, this is no excuse for Apple support to keep pretending that they don't know about this issue. They could explain what the problem is and how to work around it, but clearly they have no incentive to make it easier for their products to interoperate with Windows. That is why forums like this one exist.

The obvious workaround is to rotate the photo 90 degrees using the Windows Viewer . This is not a good idea. It makes the picture look fine, but destroys all the other EXIF metadata, such as the date-stamp on the photo. Another obvious solution is to buy a new photo management tool that fully supports EXIF. However, if you don't feel like replacing your beloved photo management utility, there is another solution.

After a weekend of google-fu and experimentation, I found a simple procedure that works for me. I downloaded and installed a free Windows utility called JPEG-EXIF (google and you will find it). This utility adds a few options to the context menu (right-click menu) on folders and individual JPG files. This new option does a lossless auto-rotation of the photo and then modifies the EXIF orientation tag to match the new orientation. It works on individual photos or on entire folders (including sub-folders). Not only does the picture now appear correctly in Windows Viewer and in my favorite photo-management software, the other EXIF tags have been preserved. You can check this in the Windows viewer by right-clicking on the files, viewing properties, and clicking the Summary tab.

There are probably other tools available that do something similar. I like this one because of its simplicity. It is also free. Many thanks to Olli Savolainen for his generosity!

[Candace]

Others in this thread have explained why this happens. The iPhone (at least since OS 4) uses EXIF metadata to keep track of the desired orientation for the picture. Many Windows utilities (including the default Windows Picture viewer in Windows XP!) do not know how to interpret EXIF tags. So the problem is actually in Windows, not the iPhone.

However, this is no excuse for Apple support to keep pretending that they don't know about this issue. They could explain what the problem is and how to work around it, but clearly they have no incentive to make it easier for their products to interoperate with Windows. That is why forums like this one exist.

The obvious workaround is to rotate the photo 90 degrees using the Windows Viewer . This is not a good idea. It makes the picture look fine, but destroys all the other EXIF metadata, such as the date-stamp on the photo. Another obvious solution is to buy a new photo management tool that fully supports EXIF. However, if you don't feel like replacing your beloved photo management utility, there is another solution.

After a weekend of google-fu and experimentation, I found a simple procedure that works for me. I downloaded and installed a free Windows utility called JPEG-EXIF (google and you will find it). This utility adds a few options to the context menu (right-click menu) on folders and individual JPG files. This new option does a lossless auto-rotation of the photo and then modifies the EXIF orientation tag to match the new orientation. It works on individual photos or on entire folders (including sub-folders). Not only does the picture now appear correctly in Windows Viewer and in my favorite photo-management software, the other EXIF tags have been preserved. You can check this in the Windows viewer by right-clicking on the files, viewing properties, and clicking the Summary tab.

There are probably other tools available that do something similar. I like this one because of its simplicity. It is also free. Many thanks to Olli Savolainen for his generosity!

This is exactly what I was looking for- a work around. thanks for sharing! This is what I miss about my Droid- directl capabilities to upload pics from my iPhone to a Picasa albumn for sharing. Emailing pics is not convenient.

[hbrumfield]

I have the same problem. No question it's some sort of bug. My brother has the same issue, and he has the 4. I just got the 4S and it's the latest iOS -- 5.01.

If you go to your attachments folder and click to open, the picture looks fine. But in my mail reader (Eudora) it definitely is sideways.

There is a solution, though. When you email the image from your phone, send the one from Photo Stream instead (if you can see it there). THAT one opens correctly in the email reader, but if you send the exact same one directly from Camera Roll, it will be sideways. I noticed that Photo Stream has a lower file size, but I could see no difference in the two images blown way up in Preview.

Of course it has nothing to do with the server. You were getting some smoke blown up your you-know-what!

[adjuvantjfoster]

Here are links to four short MOV files showing the four orientations for the iPhone 4S. I had to upload them to DropBox for you as all of my available Cloud based mail programs choked on saving or sending these little video files.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7584570/IMG_0061.MOV
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7584570/IMG_0062.MOV
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7584570/IMG_0063.MOV
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7584570/IMG_0064.MOV
I usually record hockey games in Landscape mode with the Home Button of the iPhone on the left side with the screen facing me. That is the mov file IMG_0063.MOV
Apple's QuickTime Player displays it correctly, while the VLC player, which ignores exif flags plays it upside down. So does the Plex Media streamer ignore the flag, so does the thunderbird mail app ignore the flag, and so on. Adobe looks at the exif flags so they get it right.
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My movies are of four Post It Notes, each one describing the location of the Home Button. Take a series of four pictures oriented like my test MOV files , then take 4 short MOV files of the same iPhone orientation. If the results are "misoriented" then the software you are using to look at them is ignoring the orientation flages.
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For more detail of this subject look at* ImpulseAdventure - JPEG / Exif Orientation and Rotation
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JPEG Rotation and EXIF Orientation
Digital Cameras with orientation sensors allow auto-rotation of portrait images. Unfortunately, support for this feature is not widespread or consistently applied.
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Digital Cameras with Orientation Sensors
Many newer digital cameras (both dSLR and Point & Shoot digicams) have a built-in orientation sensor. Virtually all Canon and Nikon digital cameras have an orientation sensor. The output of this sensor is used to set the EXIF orientation flag in the image file's metatdata to reflect the positioning of the camera with respect to the ground. Canon calls their sensor the "Intelligent Orientation" sensor. It is presumably a 2-axis tilt sensor, allowing 4 possible orientations to be detected (shown in the left side of the diagram in the link above).

[lanemi]

Hey everyone I am TOTALLY NEW on the site as well. I had this annoying little problem. Yea, so I opened it with Microsoft Picture Manager but Im sure Photoshop works as well. You just open rotate and save. A pain in the butt but it'll have to do until they fix it.