Windows 7 not auto rotating pictures

Anonymous
2010-04-28T18:17:17+00:00

I use Nik and Adobe software to edit photos and currently use Nikon Transfer to import photos, these programs read the exif auto rotate imformation stored by my nikon D80.

My problem is that when I view my pictures in Window explorer or Windows live photo gallery they are not auto rotated to portrait mode, it has become apparent that these programs are unable to to read the exif information.

I have tried rotating to portrait mode in explorer and photo gallery only to discover that when I view these pics in another non microsoft program that they revert back to landscape mode,  I have also used win 7 autoplay to import pics and they are rotated correctly using win7 programs but not in other programs I use.

Is there a current fix for this problem?

Using Win7 64bit

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2011-11-21T14:32:29+00:00

Hi,

 

Some photo applications will display a photo as rotated which is referred to as soft rotating by reading metadata on the photo itself. Although the Photo Gallery rotates photos on import using this same metadata, many a times it doesn't also rotate all un-rotated photos in their collection for them automatically, or at least display the photos as rotated like some other applications do.

The reason that the Photo Gallery rotates on import, but not after that is because there are a number of applications that don't correctly update the photo metadata after rotating. This metadata is supposed to reflect the state of the photo, but if the photo is rotated without updating this metadata, another application using this metadata to determine whether or not to rotate it will incorrectly rotate the photo.

During import, the photos are coming directly from the camera, at which point the integrity of this metadata is not in question. So although it's safe for the Photo Gallery to rely on this metadata to make an accurate rotate decision during import, as soon as the photo makes its way to the PC, any other application could interact with the photo, and potentially corrupt this metadata. Therefore, the Photo Gallery doesn't soft rotate at this point.

 

Regards,

Syed N – Microsoft Support

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The great part of Microsoft's answer is this explanation and this is how it reads to me; well if other programs don't read and write Exif data correctly, Windows and MS products shouldn't either.  Don't cater to the bad programs, program to a higher standard and then people will make the choice not to use these ones that don't work correctly, or allow your software to update or correct the metadata to repair these photos with bad metadata, making your product superior and the product people actually want to use.

Microsoft, any fixes expected for Windows 7 Explorer and Photoviewer coming soon?

Come on Microsoft, get your act together, there is a reason people are leaving you so quickly for Apple!

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-12-01T23:55:24+00:00

    I've never had a problem with my canon.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-12-01T22:44:34+00:00

    First of all would it not be better for microsoft to ackowlege the fact that thier programs cannot soft rotate using the cameras exif information?

    Who wants to manually rotate 100 to 500 photos when other programs do it for you.

    What about when you want to see a slide show straight off the memory card in Windows Media Center, media center does not soft rotate.

    For those who shoot Nikon Nef files, use Nikons Nef codec, microsofts camera codec still does not soft rotate, and finaly microsoft must have realized that there programs corrupt the exif file because right click rotate function has been disabled in explorer and photo gallery for raw files.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-11-30T22:19:44+00:00

    This really is a funny thread,

    Complaining about auto rotate, really :)

    Right click and select rotate.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-11-30T06:52:09+00:00

    My laptop is 5 years old but has been upgraded to Win7, and I have a brand new nettop also running Win7.  It's the nettop running through my TV on Windows Media Center that really made me aware of this issue.  The slide show/screensaver is embarrassing.  It's things like this that make me want to check out a Mac, especially with the peer pressure I get every day to switch.  I'm pretty sure no Mac fails to auto-rotate on EXIF, like, ever.  Windows really needs to release a patch.

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