My photo is turned at 90 degree. Why and what can I do?

[Elena Belyak]

Some of my pictures (2 up to now) look turned at 90 degree after uploading, and I can't see a way to turn them back to normal way... What could it be? All I did till now was light cropping, with the logic that maybe they are too long or something (what is stupid, but cannot think anything else), but it doesn't work. Will appreciate any help, please!

Kind regards, Elena, Russia

[Matthew Winn]

Somewhere along the way the orientation of your image has managed to get out of step with the tag in the image that says which way up it should be.

When you take a picture with the camera in the portrait orientation the image on the sensor is obviously rotated relative to the camera. Instead of the camera doing the sensible thing and rotating the image back itself, what it does is add a tag (the Orientation tag) to the image to say that the picture is the wrong way up, and then expects everything else that uses the image to rotate the image every time it is viewed.

Some programs do rotate the image when it is being viewed and some don't, and that makes it difficult to know what the real orientation of an image is and causes all sorts of confusion. Look in the settings of your image editing software and see if you can find something like "Rotate images automatically". Turn it OFF. Then you'll be able to see the real orientation of your images, and if they're wrong you'll be able to rotate them yourself.

There's no way to fix an image after it has been uploaded to Panoramio. The only thing you can do is fix the original image and upload it again.

There was a thread discussing this a few months ago here.

[Elena Belyak]

Matthew, thank you very much, all you said sounds reasonably, will try it later.
Best regards, Elena

[Elena Belyak]

I've done it, my picture looks normal at last! Because my "image edition software" doesn't let me manipulate with EXIF, auto-rotation and stuff like that (I use modest Microsoft Offise Picture Manager, find it quite sufficient), I googled "EXIF edition", selected Free Image and Photo Viewer (www.exifsoftware.com), downloaded it, opened problematic picture, and it was turned at 90 degree indeed, with orientation tag in EXIF reading "rotated 90 right". I rotated it back and saved it. Then uploaded picture at Panoramio - excellent, picture is orientated as it must be. However EXIF of the picture disappeared, I cannot see it on Free Image and Photo Viewer anyway. I don't know if it is a problem, have never used Exif before and have no idea whether behavior of a picture with EXIF and one without it is the same. Hope it is.

Matthew, thank you for help!
My best regards, Elena.

[Tomas K☼h☼ut]

EXIF is not important for image itself.
It may be interesting source of information about photo and how was photo taken (date and time, exposure time, apperture, use of flashlight, white balance etc.)

[RoarX]

EXIF are just meta data (data about data, in this case, data (info) about the image). The photo can be viewed as normal without it.

This problem occurs when a photo is taken vertically and is stored as a horizontal image with a orientation tag in the EXIF telling the image editing software to show the photo turned 90 degrees to make it look vertical. The physical image is still horizontal and needs to be physically turned 90 degrees and have the orientation tag updated or removed. The orientation tag should say: 'upper left'

[hvbemmel]

The simple way to turn a photo, without any editing software is to look for it in Windows explorer and rightclick on it. then leftclick rotate.

[Elena Belyak]

Thomas, RoarX, thank you very much for explanation and help!
Hvbemmel, this way seems to be funny simple! Will try to find my previous problematic picture (will try to find a time for this first...) and do it, hope it will work OK. Thank you very much!

Greetings from Russia, Elena

[Elena Belyak]

Quote hvbemmel:

The simple way to turn a photo, without any editing software is to look for it in Windows explorer and rightclick on it. then leftclick rotate.

Hvbemmel, it works OK, I have found one more "wrong" picture, used your advice, and after this a picture was posted perfectly. Many thanks for useful message!

My best regards, Elena