How do you edit a picture in the classifieds?
- Thread starter Jim Roche
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Last I checked, the ability to rotate photos uploaded to the Gallery area was not working in the present version of the PhotoPost Gallery software, though it has been awhile since I last checked if there was an updated version (they broke that feature in the present version).
However, if you uploaded the photo as an Attachment via the Attachment Manager instead, as most do these days, then there is no facility for rotating photos, so they will always display in the orientation they were originally saved in by the device that took the original photo.
The confusion regarding the way a photo is oriented in your camera or phone, and some advanced photo viewers/editors, versus what you see on a photo uploaded to the web and displayed in a web browser is understandable. It helps to realize that most cameras have an absolute fixed home orientation that they call "up" and all photos are actually stored in this orientation when saved to internal or flash memory (and later uploaded or copied to your PC or this website) regardless of how the camera was actually oriented when the photo was taken. When you view the photo in your camera and/or certain advanced viewer or editor applications it will appear to have a proper orientation only because there is special optional header information (EXIF data, though other optional header extensions are also available) that tells the viewer to rotate the photo by xxx degrees (typically 0,90,180,270 and mirrored or flipped and upon which axis are the possible choices) so that it looks upright even though the saved data file itself may actually be upside down. This data is not a part of the actual JPEG specification but an extension to it so not all JPEG viewers support the optional header data (and supporting such means additional code is required to understand such and apply necessary transformations, etc. Unfortunately, neither web browsers nor most forum software utilize the optional header data as they use a more streamlined viewer to improve rendering speed and reduce server loads, as such they will always display the photo in the orientation with which it was physically saved because they neither see nor use the optional EXIF header data that says to apply additional transformations to the photo to get it into an entirely different orientation than it was actually saved with. It would be so much simpler for everyone if cameras simply saved photos in the orientation with which they were originally taken, but very few cameras actually work that way even though most cameras have the software to apply such transformations internally when viewing the saved photo (even high end DSLRs save photos in this screwy way).
So, if the photo looks upside down on this site it really is because the file that was uploaded to the site was an upside down view of the photo. But it is possible to properly and permanently rotate the physical photo on your PC with appropriate software (IrfanView being a free alternative with lossless JPEG transformation algorithms) and then upload that rotated photo to the site. Maybe someday web browsers will also recognize such transformation notations, though such will slow down rendering of a web page. I am not really sure why the Attachment Manager seems to lack the capability to apply a manual rotation, but perhaps it is because it is designed for uploading far more than just photos (it does documents as well).
However, if you uploaded the photo as an Attachment via the Attachment Manager instead, as most do these days, then there is no facility for rotating photos, so they will always display in the orientation they were originally saved in by the device that took the original photo.
The confusion regarding the way a photo is oriented in your camera or phone, and some advanced photo viewers/editors, versus what you see on a photo uploaded to the web and displayed in a web browser is understandable. It helps to realize that most cameras have an absolute fixed home orientation that they call "up" and all photos are actually stored in this orientation when saved to internal or flash memory (and later uploaded or copied to your PC or this website) regardless of how the camera was actually oriented when the photo was taken. When you view the photo in your camera and/or certain advanced viewer or editor applications it will appear to have a proper orientation only because there is special optional header information (EXIF data, though other optional header extensions are also available) that tells the viewer to rotate the photo by xxx degrees (typically 0,90,180,270 and mirrored or flipped and upon which axis are the possible choices) so that it looks upright even though the saved data file itself may actually be upside down. This data is not a part of the actual JPEG specification but an extension to it so not all JPEG viewers support the optional header data (and supporting such means additional code is required to understand such and apply necessary transformations, etc. Unfortunately, neither web browsers nor most forum software utilize the optional header data as they use a more streamlined viewer to improve rendering speed and reduce server loads, as such they will always display the photo in the orientation with which it was physically saved because they neither see nor use the optional EXIF header data that says to apply additional transformations to the photo to get it into an entirely different orientation than it was actually saved with. It would be so much simpler for everyone if cameras simply saved photos in the orientation with which they were originally taken, but very few cameras actually work that way even though most cameras have the software to apply such transformations internally when viewing the saved photo (even high end DSLRs save photos in this screwy way).
So, if the photo looks upside down on this site it really is because the file that was uploaded to the site was an upside down view of the photo. But it is possible to properly and permanently rotate the physical photo on your PC with appropriate software (IrfanView being a free alternative with lossless JPEG transformation algorithms) and then upload that rotated photo to the site. Maybe someday web browsers will also recognize such transformation notations, though such will slow down rendering of a web page. I am not really sure why the Attachment Manager seems to lack the capability to apply a manual rotation, but perhaps it is because it is designed for uploading far more than just photos (it does documents as well).
Just a followup as I missed that the question was specifically about the Classifieds.
To rotate a photo that is not already upright (as defined by what your camera considers its fixed "up" orientation, regardless of how you held your camera) it must first be properly rotated on your PC prior to upload and the rotated photo saved back to disk (just rotating in memory will change nothing). However, be aware that not all photo viewer software actually rotates the actual image data -- like the EXIF data, some just make a note to rotate its appearance the next time you view it in that viewer again (or only do so momentarily in memory). That means you need to use an app that really does rotate the photo and then saves the newly rotated photo back to disk for you to upload. Again, on PC, IrfanView is a good free photo viewer that is capable of properly rotating photos and applying a lossless JPEG rotation transformation (you just have to instruct it to apply this transformation).
The other option is to learn what your camera/phone considers to be its upright "home" position and always take photos intended for upload to the web in that specific orientation (sometimes such is literally upside down relative to how you might normally use the phone, but is usually the normal landscape orientation with true digital cameras). What actually defines the home orientation is how the manufacturer installed the camera board when they manufactured your phone or camera, but every photo is physically saved in this one fixed orientation regardless of how you may have held the camera at the time the photo was taken, only a notation as to the camera's orientation gets noted and added to the optional EXIF header rather than the image really being saved in the correct orientation.
Maybe someday they will make cameras that store properly rotated photos to begin with, but very few cameras and phones today do so. The web browser is simply displaying the photo as it was actually uploaded but does not make use of the EXIF extended headers (as it would slow down rendering if all photos had to be fully decoded before page rendering could begin), which is where the rotation instructions are noted by the camera. EXIF aware applications then use that recorded notation to create the illusion of an upright photo despite it being saved sideways, upside down, mirrored or flipped along an axis -- but EXIF headers are not actually a part of the JPEG specification but rather an extension that makes use of the optional header capabilities that many file formats allow (there are also other optional header extensions like IPTC, user comments, user application custom extensions, and so forth).
Anyhow, I hope these two posts help to clear things up. This never used to be a significant issue until recently as even just a couple years ago people would have first copied their photos to their PC prior to uploading. And because just a few years ago very few applications and operating systems were even aware of the optional EXIF extension headers it was very apparent to the user that their photos were in fact upside down and in need of rotation prior to uploading. For better and worse, mobile devices made it easier for people to quickly insert photos into their posts without the intermediary of a PC, but they so thoroughly hide the true orientation of the photo from the user that it leads to a lot of confusion and finger pointing where the server is then blamed for the confusion.
In reality it is a mess that the camera industry inflicted upon the web and it will likely take some years before the countless applications that make the web possible are updated and refined to try and fix this mess that camera manufacturers inflicted upon it...it is just frustrating that so many will blame the web applications for the fault due to how well the fault is hidden from the user's view on their camera or mobile device. Just from the web browser perspective, having to download, decode and apply transformations to every photo and image on a page (and modern sites may consist of hundreds of such graphics) will really slow down page rendering and further increase memory demands, as a browser can not begin rendering a page until it knows the actual dimensions of every graphic on that page and having to apply a rotation means that the readily available dimensions data cannot be trusted until you know what rotation might first need to be applied (and the EXIF data is typically much further into the file than the pixel dimension data, which is typically store very near the beginning of each file).
To rotate a photo that is not already upright (as defined by what your camera considers its fixed "up" orientation, regardless of how you held your camera) it must first be properly rotated on your PC prior to upload and the rotated photo saved back to disk (just rotating in memory will change nothing). However, be aware that not all photo viewer software actually rotates the actual image data -- like the EXIF data, some just make a note to rotate its appearance the next time you view it in that viewer again (or only do so momentarily in memory). That means you need to use an app that really does rotate the photo and then saves the newly rotated photo back to disk for you to upload. Again, on PC, IrfanView is a good free photo viewer that is capable of properly rotating photos and applying a lossless JPEG rotation transformation (you just have to instruct it to apply this transformation).
The other option is to learn what your camera/phone considers to be its upright "home" position and always take photos intended for upload to the web in that specific orientation (sometimes such is literally upside down relative to how you might normally use the phone, but is usually the normal landscape orientation with true digital cameras). What actually defines the home orientation is how the manufacturer installed the camera board when they manufactured your phone or camera, but every photo is physically saved in this one fixed orientation regardless of how you may have held the camera at the time the photo was taken, only a notation as to the camera's orientation gets noted and added to the optional EXIF header rather than the image really being saved in the correct orientation.
Maybe someday they will make cameras that store properly rotated photos to begin with, but very few cameras and phones today do so. The web browser is simply displaying the photo as it was actually uploaded but does not make use of the EXIF extended headers (as it would slow down rendering if all photos had to be fully decoded before page rendering could begin), which is where the rotation instructions are noted by the camera. EXIF aware applications then use that recorded notation to create the illusion of an upright photo despite it being saved sideways, upside down, mirrored or flipped along an axis -- but EXIF headers are not actually a part of the JPEG specification but rather an extension that makes use of the optional header capabilities that many file formats allow (there are also other optional header extensions like IPTC, user comments, user application custom extensions, and so forth).
Anyhow, I hope these two posts help to clear things up. This never used to be a significant issue until recently as even just a couple years ago people would have first copied their photos to their PC prior to uploading. And because just a few years ago very few applications and operating systems were even aware of the optional EXIF extension headers it was very apparent to the user that their photos were in fact upside down and in need of rotation prior to uploading. For better and worse, mobile devices made it easier for people to quickly insert photos into their posts without the intermediary of a PC, but they so thoroughly hide the true orientation of the photo from the user that it leads to a lot of confusion and finger pointing where the server is then blamed for the confusion.
In reality it is a mess that the camera industry inflicted upon the web and it will likely take some years before the countless applications that make the web possible are updated and refined to try and fix this mess that camera manufacturers inflicted upon it...it is just frustrating that so many will blame the web applications for the fault due to how well the fault is hidden from the user's view on their camera or mobile device. Just from the web browser perspective, having to download, decode and apply transformations to every photo and image on a page (and modern sites may consist of hundreds of such graphics) will really slow down page rendering and further increase memory demands, as a browser can not begin rendering a page until it knows the actual dimensions of every graphic on that page and having to apply a rotation means that the readily available dimensions data cannot be trusted until you know what rotation might first need to be applied (and the EXIF data is typically much further into the file than the pixel dimension data, which is typically store very near the beginning of each file).
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