I’m astounded that Microsoft has not figured out that people take photographs with their camera rotated 90 degrees. Not every photograph is in landscape mode. However, Windows Vista thinks that they are. All modern cameras contain a sensor that detects whether a photo is taken in portrait or landscape mode and the picture is tagged accordingly. Most software auto-rotates the photo accordingly. But not Windows Vista and not Windows Movie Maker. You have to manually edit/rotate the photo yourself. It’s time for Microsoft to become more customer-focused and start including these features in Windows.
I agree. Apple’s iPhoto has the same problem. Tons of exif/metadata is recorded with each shot, but no information on camera position? Is it a hardware issue? Do camera manufacturers need to start including some sort or orientation-figuring-out hardware (as opposed to 32 picture modes that include candles, skiing, group of people at a picnic mode, etc)?
Along the same lines – there is little to no attention paid to duplicate control. As someone who has pooched his photo and music libraries more than any semi-competent person should; I would think that this is a major source of frustration for anyone that has multiple computers. ‘Library’ files are great when they work, but when an upgrade/migration/backup/restore has gone awry, there are few options beyond starting over (and losing your albums, ratings, genres, comments, etc).
Every digital cameras I’ve used has an orientation sensor, they have been standard on most cameras for years. If you use Irfanview to view the pictures, there is an option to “Auto-rotate image according to EXIF info (if available)”. I don’t see why the bundled Windows programs can’t do the same. I don’t want to open and edit a bunch of photos just to rotate them to allow them to viewed properly in my Windows picture slideshow; it’s unnecessary wasted effort.
@THJ: iPhoto does NOT have this problem… at least with my 4 digital cameras. What version are you running? Are other applications noticing the orientation of your camera? Are you sure your camera even has this capability?
Yahoo Widgets has the same problem. Too bad because I like their little desktop photo frame widget.
And if you rotate the photo in Microsoft photo viewer (at least in XP, and i think also still in Vista), it will not rotate lossless. The quality of the photo will degrade. Rotate a few times and you have nothing left. If you have jpg photos, as most of us have, please make sure you have a photo editor that does lossless jpg rotation.