A2 Portrait and Landscape

Hi to all!

I have an A2 for about 2 months. I 'm very happy and have taken many many photos, but 1 little thing is bugging me (among bigger things...).

I have not found a way to make a portrait picture be saved in the appropriate orientation (in camera).

All I can do is press the "down" in Quick View and the camera rotates the thumbnail. But once I load the pictures in the PC (with Card Reader), the orientation is in Landscape.

Of course, it is possible to change the orientation with some viewer programs, but when saved the jpegs are usually resampled (loss of quality or Mb) and if it is raw the viewer cannot overwrite.

I really do not want to use the heavy Photoshop in every "portrait oriented" picture, just to rotate it. Plus, it is not easy to create a batch for rotation since only about 30% of the shots are "portrait".

I had been used to an old HP P&S camera that was saving the picture in the right orientation automatically (it had a sensor to understand the orientation during exposure time).

Have any ideas?

The KM DIVU software can batch process and rotate. I use it frequently for batch conversion (and rotation) of raw images. DIVU preverses the exif data, but I'm not sure if it performs a resave on a jpeg image (which would cause a slight loss of image qualty).
Regards,
Richard.
--
Richard B.
http://www.pbase.com/richard_b
http://www.rbpics.com

There is two options you have:
1) get used to it...

2) get dalifer, or an equivilent software that can losslessly rotate your images. As far as rotating raw files goes, I believe dalifer can rotate those too, but again, when they are opened in any program, they may not be the "appropriate" orientation.

It would have been nice for KM to put in orientation sensors into the Ax series, but they didn't. Even the 7D has an orientation sensor, but it doesn't save the images in the proper orientation, as far as I know. Its kinda a funky situation, my speculation would be that it has to do with patents...
--
Regards,
Matt
Can't we all just get along?
http://www.pbase.com/ph0t0man
http://www.pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/mtf_faq

First of all, Richard and Matt, thanks for your answers.

ph0t0man said:

The KM DIVU software can batch process and rotate

Click to expand...

Yes, but we have to pick out all the portrait oriented pictures and then run the process on them.

Since we have done that "in camera" (pressing "down" button during preview), the camera knows the proper orientation and even if we turn off and on the camera, the pictures are displayed correctly on the LCD.

But KM DIVU displays them again in the wrong orientation, when opening the files.

ph0t0man said:

get dalifer, or an equivilent software that can losslessly rotate your images.

Click to expand...

For jpg: I have tried some viewer programs and all of them can rotate the image. But when saving the change, they re-encode.

Of course, with "100% quality" on resave we could maintain all the information, but the file size is now double (3 becomes 6 Mb).
Does dalifer save the jpg data without re-encoding the image?

ph0t0man said:

It would have been nice for KM to put in orientation sensors
into the Ax series, but they didn't. ... my speculation would
be that it has to do with patents...

Click to expand...

Even without orientation sensonrs (or without using them), we can explicitly define the orientation by using "down" button during preview. That orientation is saved somewhere, and camera remembers.

It would be nice if KM DIVU or other programs could use that info (DIVU does not for sure). I do not think that there is a patent prohibiting the transition of the image from camera to PC as the user has selected.

Perhaps, we could use that info in the batch process. Do you know where is it stored?

The situation is even worse for the A1 -- it doesn't even have the in-camera reorientation.

I've been using Picasa, which can rotate the images (for viewing inside the program) with no work done on the original at all. So, if you want to do this for viewing the images, Picasa may be the way to go.

nidkal said:

nidkal said:

get dalifer, or an equivilent software that can losslessly rotate your images.

Click to expand...

For jpg: I have tried some viewer programs and all of them can
rotate the image. But when saving the change, they re-encode.
Of course, with "100% quality" on resave we could maintain all the
information, but the file size is now double (3 becomes 6 Mb).
Does dalifer save the jpg data without re-encoding the image?

Click to expand...

Dalifer losslessly rotates images...meaning, there should be no change in file size, and no change in quality. I can't honestly say I use it, since I shoot almost exclusively in raw, and only use dalifer to preview thubnails within windows.

nidkal said:

nidkal said:

It would have been nice for KM to put in orientation sensors
into the Ax series, but they didn't. ... my speculation would
be that it has to do with patents...

Click to expand...

Even without orientation sensonrs (or without using them), we can
explicitly define the orientation by using "down" button during
preview. That orientation is saved somewhere, and camera remembers.
It would be nice if KM DIVU or other programs could use that info
(DIVU does not for sure). I do not think that there is a patent
prohibiting the transition of the image from camera to PC as the
user has selected.
Perhaps, we could use that info in the batch process. Do you know
where is it stored?

Click to expand...

You are very correct. That info is stored somewhere, I'd bet that Dalibor (who makes dalifer) can tell you the exact place where that info is stored, and I am almost certain that dalifer is able to show that info. I'm not sure if it can rotate automatically, but you could certainly look into it more. Check http://www.dalibor.cz/support/ for more details. Even if the software doesn't do it as of right now, Dalibor may be in the process of implimenting it, or probably would if enough people were interested.

There is a trail version, which has some limiting features, but it is worth a try. Even the full version of the software is very cheap.
--
Regards,
Matt
Can't we all just get along?
http://www.pbase.com/ph0t0man
http://www.pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/mtf_faq

PS Elements 3 understands the in camera rotation after the pictures is transfered to the Hdisk. If you then rightclick in PSE 3 on one of the images and chooses "edit in photoshop" then Photoshop CS dosn't understand it and gets the image in landscape if its a jpg but does it correctly for mrw files. On the other hand if you use the browser inside PS CS then the both types of pics gets loaded correctly.
ACDSee 7 dosn't understand the roateted image.
Picasa 2 on my computer does understand the rotation of jpg but not mrw.
Rawshooter loads only mrw's and does it correctly.
--
Cheers
Peter

All about A1/A2: http://www.pbase.com/mtf_foto_studies/mtf_faq
my stuff: http://www.pbase.com/pmthor/

list of applications that support lossless jpeg 90 degree rotations:
http://sylvana.net/jpegcrop/losslessapps.html