Forum
Images rotating when uploaded to the Assets window
Hi, Some of my images are being automatically rotated sideways when uploaded to the assets window. They are right way up on my desktop. This is sporadically happening to some images. Any ideas why this is happening?
I think your desktop computer is actually rotating them to display.
Hi Bridget,
I had this issue with some photos taken with an iPhone which had it's orientation lock on. Not sure if this helps or not, I ended up re-saving them and uploading
Hi folks, yes these are photos from a clients iPhone. They are right way up on the desktop and can be rotated before before uploading to Perch. However once uploaded they reverse to being sideways. I've opened these up in Photoshop and saved them again and it works fine. Thanks for the tip Michael, I'll pass it on to the client.
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but a client is having the same issues on uploading assets taken on an iPhone 6. And getting pretty fed up with it!
I don't know if something akin to this stack overflow thread might be implemented in the Assets App: Stack Overflow - PHP read_exif_data and Adjust Orientation
+1 on this issue, is there anything that could be done to avoid this going forwards? I have frustrated clients, too. It is fine when looking at it on desktop, but not in Perch.
+1 again on this issue, the iPad, especially iPad Pro is becoming more and more a go to pro device for small businesses.
Rachel actually explained the issue on the Slack group quite well - EXIF libraries are not very common and would benefit very few users.
It's on my own task list to try and solve this, but when I'll have time is anyone's guess!
Rachel said:
Yeah! It's just such a problem for clients using iPad's, they basically can't upload from an iPad, which in my opinion is quite a sticking point. If there's someway perhaps you can check if the library exists, to stop errors for users who don't have the library enabled, that would be the perfect solution.
The issue isn't a technical one, the issue is that time is a finite resource and we have to choose to put our time into that which benefits the most people.
If we spend our time solving this problem and then 50% of people with the problem then still have the problem due to lack of server support, that isn't very worthwhile when we could spend the time on the Perch UI for example which benefits every user.
We do sometimes take on specific additions as sponsored features. As in a company feels some addition to Perch is worth sponsoring the development of. This enables us to put resources into it (usually because we can then afford to contract out some other work). So if it is highly important to your projects and you have the required libraries on your serve then you are welcome to drop us a line to discuss.
Another plus one. I love Perch and my main customer (a UK school) loves Perch. But we both hate the way that image rotation appears to break when uploading to Perch!
The gallery app is the one that is most used by the school. They use it on a weekly basis to show parents what the children have been up to . This week they uploaded 15 photos that all were correctly rotated on the PC desktop and 11 of them are incorrectly rotated.
I love what you do, and respect that this is time and priority dependant. But ultimately this makes me look unprofessional, especially if I have turn round to them and say 'sorry, that is just the way it is'.
As mentioned above:
Thanks for the reply Rachel (didn't expect one on a Sunday!) but this particular 'company' is a very small rural Primary school. They will not have the budget to do something like this and I would not even suggest it to them.
What I don't really understand is why this is only affecting a sub set of users. Surely this affects all users who use the gallery app in their website?
Those who use the gallery app plus upload images directly from a phone = tiny group in the overall scheme of things. As you can imagine we have a fair bit of data on feature requests so we know which things are of most interest.
This is "in the queue" but it is very low priority. I understand that for you it is higher priority but we have to balance the things that are wanted by 1000s of people, based on what will make the most difference to the most of them.
It probably does affect quite a few users - Rachel is saying that any solution they provide would only help a sub-set of users. For any solution to work, the server hosting the website would need the PHP exif module enabled - which isn't a default with many hosting providers.
If your client is using a desktop, get them to open the photos in some photo-viewing software, adjust the orientation if necessary and save the photo. Then upload.
Thanks to both Rachel and Duncan for comments.
I have done a bit more testing and it seems that any photo taken with an iPhone or iPad in portrait orientation will result in an incorrectly orientated photo in Perch (not just in the gallery app either - in the asset upload as well).
Opening up these portrait photos in Photoshop or similar displays the photo correctly.
I have tried removing the EXIF data from the photos before uploading - no dice. If I save the photo, changing the size by 1% and then upload, then Perch displays them correctly.
I just have to work out a batch method of doing this now that is of an appropriate technical level for a busy Head Teacher!
By doing that you're removing the information that indicates that the image needs rotating.
When you take a photo with your device rotated, the file is saved with some meta information that indicates that the photo is on its side. When your device, desktop computer, or image editing tool reads the file, it looks at the meta data and correspondingly corrects the orientation of the photo as it displays it. The file does not change - it's still on its side.
Perch does not read this meta information currently, so sideways images are displayed sideways. We'll add that feature in the future, but our hands are tied by lack of support on your hosting, so not that many people will benefit from it. I'm not sure how else to explain this to make it make sense.