Posting photos from smartphones in threads

[turquoisedude]

I had thought it was me (and given the history of some of my repairs and restorations, that's always a possibility...LOL) but I see that I am not the only one that winds up posting images from my smartphone sideways.   My latest digital camera died (after exactly 18 months...) so I am trying to avoid buying a new one, if I can.

 

For the most part, I find I have to download the photo, then rotate it 90 degrees to the left (I use Microsoft photo editor) on my PC.  It looks upside down on the PC, but it will post correctly in a thread here.  

 

I must admit that I also occaisionally see photos that are not oriented correctly on classified ad sites (mostly on Kijiji).   

 

What causes this?  What is the best workaround?  I haven't yet tried changing the phone's position to see if that helps or not.  Is this something related to the phone (ie - Android VS iPhone)?  Is there a setting that can be adjusted?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.... LOL 

 

 

 

[panthera]

I've posted millions of photos

and the orientation of the photo which came out was entirely a crapshoot. It's clearly a misinterpretation of the coding by the software somewhere along the line - whether in the OS of the phone or another device along the line.

If anyone ever figures out how to get it right 100% of the time, please post. Oh, and I've had the same experience with apple as with android, so give it a rest Macfanboyz....

 

[Unimatic1140]

I'll look at that when I get some spare time and see if I can force the correct orientation.

 

[revvinkevin]

 

 

It's funny, I was just talking with Gordon (Kenmoreguy64) about this same thing yesterday.  He was saying it's an iPhone thing, but I've never noticed as I've never posted photos here from my phone.   I do post LOTS of photos from my phone to another website (Yelp) but have <span style="text-decoration: underline;">never</span> had any problems with photos posting sideways, upside down or what ever.

 

[earthling177]

As far as I can tell, it's a mixture of things.

When you take a picture with a modern camera (it doesn't have to be a smartphone), it takes the picture and attaches a lot of different values ("metadata") about the picture, including the GPS coordinates (if it has access to that, or is turned on), date and time, aperture, speed, and lots of other photography things, and one of the values it stores is what orientation the camera was in degrees.

I believe (but not completely sure) that if your iThing is either upright (home button on the bottom) or landscape so the home button is to the left, the picture will post OK because most other software will accept a picture at 90 degrees.

The trouble starts when the iThing will take a picture in any direction and just attach "rotate 180 or 270 degrees" to the picture and the software on the other side either doesn't care or doesn't know how to flip the pictures to correct it.

Another thing to test, I haven't, but heard about it, is that if are posting straight from the phone, instead of sending the pix to a computer and posting from there, is that you might be posting with the phone 90 degrees from what the picture was taken, and that might influence how the software on the other side deals with it.

So, hopefully all of this will help, although I have the impression that since I did not test it, most people will discard it as a rumor. It's not. We are sure that the metadata is interacting with web software in weird ways and people who care and have tested have found a consistent easy solution by paying attention to how they take the pictures and then post them.

It's not hard, it's just a case of paying attention.

For the record, I have both an Android phone and an iPhone. I am told by people who have only an Android phone that it *also* happens on that platform, but I have not tested because I don't use the Android phone that much and I use it mostly as a phone anyway.

And in case someone is wondering "but Paulo, why doesn't it happen with 'real' cameras?", well, it would, except that smartphones nowadays are a slab of glass with software buttons and will take a picture in any direction, while cameras which have real hardware buttons make the user take the picture in a more standard way that software understands, because it's uncomfortable to press the button with the camera in the wrong direction.

Have fun!
   -- Paulo.