Author Topic: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.  (Read 4750 times)

Offline FairfieldPhoto

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EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« on: September 21, 2006, 05:54:03 AM »
I am using PM 4.4.3.1 to ingest images for onsite viewing/ordering and then running that final batch of images through BreezeBrowser (BB) in order to quickly generate my EOS-Template ecommerce site.

I do my image rotation in PM for the cameras that don't have auto-rotate and then apply the hard rotation.

When I bring all those images into BB to generate the ordering site, EVERY thumbnail is in horizontal orientation.  Now, when I open the full size image in BB, it is correctly rotated.  But the customer service people (who have been using JAlbum in the past) will go nuts when they see the vertical thumbnails rotated to horizontal.

I thought it would be a BB problem, but Chris looked the images and said the image was correctly rotated, but that "thumbnail has not been updated and is still in landscape orientation."

In the grand scheme of urgent bug fixes, this isn't high on that list.  But is the rotation indicator on the EXIF preview be something you could look at updating to be consistent with the full size image in the future?

Thanks!

-Mike

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2006, 06:42:14 AM »
Mike,

I am using PM 4.4.3.1 to ingest images for onsite viewing/ordering and then running that final batch of images through BreezeBrowser (BB) in order to quickly generate my EOS-Template ecommerce site.

I do my image rotation in PM for the cameras that don't have auto-rotate and then apply the hard rotation.

When I bring all those images into BB to generate the ordering site, EVERY thumbnail is in horizontal orientation.  Now, when I open the full size image in BB, it is correctly rotated.  But the customer service people (who have been using JAlbum in the past) will go nuts when they see the vertical thumbnails rotated to horizontal.

I thought it would be a BB problem, but Chris looked the images and said the image was correctly rotated, but that "thumbnail has not been updated and is still in landscape orientation."

In the grand scheme of urgent bug fixes, this isn't high on that list.  But is the rotation indicator on the EXIF preview be something you could look at updating to be consistent with the full size image in the future?

We update the Exif orientation tag.  No image data is rotated in any way.  BB and JAlbum should be changed to show both the Exif thumbnail and the JPEG image itself in the proper orientation.  This is something they should do, not us.

If you want to, you can hard-rotate your images which does update the Exif orientation tag to "not rotated" and then physically rotates both the Exif thumbnail and the image itself.  The "Apply Rotation to JPEGs..." command on the Tools menu can to that in a batch.  Once hard-rotated, there won't be an application on the planet that will get it wrong.

HTH,

-Kirk

Offline FairfieldPhoto

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2006, 08:05:06 AM »
OK.  I get it now.  To make my PM/JAlbum interface work, I had to apply hard rotation to JPGs.  I was still doing that when I passed images to BB.  When using BB to make the EOS template, I need to leave the soft rotation indicator set and not apply hard rotation.  Added benefit is that I don't have to use up time to run the apply rotation on a 100+ images that were just ingested.

Thanks for your help!

-Mike

Offline heywood

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2007, 02:16:38 PM »
[Forum admins: Sorry to post on a very old thread... if it's better to start a new one, please do so or let me know and I will gladly re-post.]

This is decidedly non-critical.

Despite following the instructions in this thread, I'm still seeing a weird thumbnail rotation issue (PM 4.5.3b4, images from Nikon D70 and Canon 30D), but only on OS X and only in some places. I will attach a few screenshots to illustrate the following description.

I ingested a bunch of photos into a contact sheet, rotated the ones that were shot vertically so that they appear upright onscreen, then ran "Apply Rotation to JPEGs", selected all images, and finally ran "Generate Finder Icons...". Now:

  • When I view a slide show of these, say in PM or OS X Preview, everything looks fine. It also looks OK under WinXP in Picture+Fax Viewer.
  • When I look at the files in OS X Finder's icon or list views, the thumbnails also look correct.
  • When I look at the files in OS X Finder's column view, the thumbnails in the column of the folder containing the files look fine...
  • ... but the preview in the very last column (which appears automatically when I highlight any one file) is still rotated sideways! Furthermore, I notice the same thing in Preview's drawer -- the images in the main panel are fine, but their thumbnails in the drawer are rotated. It appears likely that these two problems have the same root cause (I'd guess the thumbnails are rendered by the same low-level OS X module in both cases).

At first I thought this might be due to some difference in how Canon and Nikon write EXIF data. But I looked more closely and found that this occurs with images from both my 30D and a borrowed N70.

As FairfieldPhoto says, this shouldn't be a big deal -- but I do work with some editors who have complained about this in the past. Setting aside the merits of that complaint, I'd like to be able to deliver what they ask for. So, is this a bug in OS X's Preview, or am I doing something dumb?

Thanks in advance for any advice/suggestions.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: December 03, 2007, 02:34:52 PM by heywood »

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2007, 03:24:30 PM »
This is decidedly non-critical.

Despite following the instructions in this thread, I'm still seeing a weird thumbnail rotation issue (PM 4.5.3b4, images from Nikon D70 and Canon 30D), but only on OS X and only in some places. I will attach a few screenshots to illustrate the following description.

I ingested a bunch of photos into a contact sheet, rotated the ones that were shot vertically so that they appear upright onscreen, then ran "Apply Rotation to JPEGs", selected all images, and finally ran "Generate Finder Icons...". Now:

  • When I view a slide show of these, say in PM or OS X Preview, everything looks fine. It also looks OK under WinXP in Picture+Fax Viewer.
  • When I look at the files in OS X Finder's icon or list views, the thumbnails also look correct.
  • When I look at the files in OS X Finder's column view, the thumbnails in the column of the folder containing the files look fine...
  • ... but the preview in the very last column (which appears automatically when I highlight any one file) is still rotated sideways! Furthermore, I notice the same thing in Preview's drawer -- the images in the main panel are fine, but their thumbnails in the drawer are rotated. It appears likely that these two problems have the same root cause (I'd guess the thumbnails are rendered by the same low-level OS X module in both cases).

At first I thought this might be due to some difference in how Canon and Nikon write EXIF data. But I looked more closely and found that this occurs with images from both my 30D and a borrowed N70.

As FairfieldPhoto says, this shouldn't be a big deal -- but I do work with some editors who have complained about this in the past. Setting aside the merits of that complaint, I'd like to be able to deliver what they ask for. So, is this a bug in OS X's Preview, or am I doing something dumb?

I can't really tell where Preview and the Finder's column view are getting the thumbnail from.  At first glance it appears that they are using the EXIF thumbnail (see the black bars on the thumbnails?) but we rotate the EXIF thumbnail when we rotate the main image data.

In looking at the thumbnails more closely however, I notice that the thumbnails have not just black bars but are completely surrounded by black pixels.  That data should not exist in the file.

So I don't know where Preview and the Finder's column view are getting the thumbnail from.  The Icon views are using the Icon assigned to the file which you had PM generate for you which explains their lack of black bars.

As a side note, can I ask why an editor would not be using something like PM or Photoshop/Bridge to view images submitted to them and would use something like Mac OS X's Preview application?

Just curious.

-Kirk

Offline heywood

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2007, 10:15:08 AM »
Quote
So I don't know where Preview and the Finder's column view are getting the thumbnail from.  The Icon views are using the Icon assigned to the file which you had PM generate for you which explains their lack of black bars.

Assuming I can shrink a few of the images in question down to a manageable size without clobbering whatever it is that's causing the problem, would it be at all useful for you to take a look at the files themselves to see what's going on? It may well have nothing to do with PM, but given my setup (30D, MacBook Pro) I can't imagine I'm the only person who has run into this.

Quote
As a side note, can I ask why an editor would not be using something like PM or Photoshop/Bridge to view images submitted to them and would use something like Mac OS X's Preview application?

Perfectly fair question. As I implied in my earlier post, I don't necessarily agree (at all) with such gripes. But I have gotten them from time to time, and on those occasions it usually wasn't appropriate for me to have pointed out the editor's lack of... enlightenment.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: EXIF Thumbnails not marked as rotated.
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2007, 10:58:26 AM »
Quote
So I don't know where Preview and the Finder's column view are getting the thumbnail from.  The Icon views are using the Icon assigned to the file which you had PM generate for you which explains their lack of black bars.

Assuming I can shrink a few of the images in question down to a manageable size without clobbering whatever it is that's causing the problem, would it be at all useful for you to take a look at the files themselves to see what's going on? It may well have nothing to do with PM, but given my setup (30D, MacBook Pro) I can't imagine I'm the only person who has run into this.

Having the original files that exhibit this behavior would be best.  Our server can certainly handle large files.  Contact me privately by clicking on my name to the left of this message, then click on the "private message" link.  I will respond with server upload information.

-Kirk