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
    2015-01-30T14:09:32+00:00

    Hello everyone,

    It is 2015 already and looks like nothing has changed. WLPG still cannot see "Orientation" in EXIF which makes it unusable nowadays. It is sad because other than that WLPG is perfect for organizing, viewing, searching family pictures

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-09-01T10:41:38+00:00

    Interestlingly, Windows 8 DOES read the metadata and "soft" rotate the photos correctly. So, Microsoft seems to have changed their view regarding this.

    Maybe we can now have a "fix" for this in Windows 7?

    Is there an option to turn on "soft rotate" somewhere?

    So if I understand correctly, because some programs might not manipulate the EXIF data correctly Windows completely ignores it?  If those applications don't handle the EXIF data correctly then they have a bug and need to be fixed.  Unfortunately the way Windows has implemented the feature has caused Windows to be the issue.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-03-11T22:15:45+00:00

    I had the same problem, very frustrating...

    I found a very easy solution:

    http://www.photo-freeware.net/jpeg-exif-autorotate.php

    Just check it out, works like a charm :-)

    Tried it, but it does alter the picture in size, so not lossless :-(

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-10-06T19:58:26+00:00

    Many thanks for this link, unlike other solutions this one is free and it does indeed work perfectly. I have tens of thousands of pictures so it took 10 minutes to auto-rotate them all, but now I can finally view properly rotated thumbnails in Explorer and images in Photo Viewer.

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