Vista's Photo Gallery and EXIF orientation

For Christmas, I bought my wife a new digital camera - one which knows
which way up it is, and records appropriate EXIF information in the
Orientation tag.

I know that Vista knows about the tag, because if I add it as a column
in Explorer, it comes up appropriately.

I know that the file contains the necessary information, because if I
show a slide show on my Wii, all the pictures come up appropriately.

Unfortunately, in Media Center and Photo Gallery, the tag is ignored,
and the pictures always come up as landscape.

I don't believe this tag is incredibly new, but it *is* incredibly
useful - manually rotating all the pictures is a drag when the camera
is able to note the correct orientation to start with.

So, what's the story here? Is there a flag I can enable somewhere to
make Vista actually *use* the tag when it displays the photo? If not,
is there anything in the pipeline to improve matters?

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

Jon,

Vista imports my pictures with the correct orientation. I just commented in
another thread that XP never did this when I imported using a card reader,
but Vista does. I have a Canon dRebel (300D) that uses Compact Flash.

TowerDave

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <skeet@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.2009fbed640372fb98d73d@msnews.microsoft.c om...
> For Christmas, I bought my wife a new digital camera - one which knows
> which way up it is, and records appropriate EXIF information in the
> Orientation tag.
>
> I know that Vista knows about the tag, because if I add it as a column
> in Explorer, it comes up appropriately.
>
> I know that the file contains the necessary information, because if I
> show a slide show on my Wii, all the pictures come up appropriately.
>
> Unfortunately, in Media Center and Photo Gallery, the tag is ignored,
> and the pictures always come up as landscape.
>
> I don't believe this tag is incredibly new, but it *is* incredibly
> useful - manually rotating all the pictures is a drag when the camera
> is able to note the correct orientation to start with.
>
> So, what's the story here? Is there a flag I can enable somewhere to
> make Vista actually *use* the tag when it displays the photo? If not,
> is there anything in the pipeline to improve matters?
>
> --
> Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
> http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
> If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

Dave Hampson <microsoft@towerdave.com> wrote:
> Vista imports my pictures with the correct orientation. I just commented in
> another thread that XP never did this when I imported using a card reader,
> but Vista does. I have a Canon dRebel (300D) that uses Compact Flash.

Ah - do you go through an import wizard of some description? I tend to
avoid such things and just copy the files directly from the SD card.
Maybe that's the difference?

Nice to see a reply to my post either way though

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

Jon,

I put the card in the reader, tell it to import, and tell it to delete after
importing. So yeah, I use the Import wizard.

Dave Hampson

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <skeet@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.20149e0ad67df69698d7b4@msnews.microsoft.c om...
> Dave Hampson <microsoft@towerdave.com> wrote:
>> Vista imports my pictures with the correct orientation. I just commented
>> in
>> another thread that XP never did this when I imported using a card
>> reader,
>> but Vista does. I have a Canon dRebel (300D) that uses Compact Flash.
>
> Ah - do you go through an import wizard of some description? I tend to
> avoid such things and just copy the files directly from the SD card.
> Maybe that's the difference?
>
> Nice to see a reply to my post either way though
>
> --
> Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
> http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
> If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

Dave Hampson <microsoft@towerdave.com> wrote:
> I put the card in the reader, tell it to import, and tell it to delete after
> importing. So yeah, I use the Import wizard.

Hmm. Assuming it *does* rotate it as it imports it, that's a pretty
second-rate level of support, IMO. The data's all there in the file -
there's no reason it shouldn't use it having copied the file directly.

I'll give the whole import business a go though, just to see exactly
what happens.

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[tcosupreme]

Yes, it is a second-rate level of support because my understanding is that when you use the windows wizard to import the pictures, the application uses the EXIF data to actually rotate the images themselves; then, the EXIF orientation data is no longer necessary because all images are displayed correctly. It will display with the correct orientation, but your risking some image degradation by rotating (i.e., editing) the image file rather than simply reading the EXIF data.

In addition, while you CAN do this to have all your future images show up correctly (by using the importer in windows), you're still SOL with your archives of older pictures that were imported by other means.

Why does't microsoft overcome this seemingly obvious improvement to their image viewers?