Story Map Tour - Imported photos rotating from portrait to landscape

[AllenRisley]

I am working with a class of students who are creating story map tours using photos that they have taken on their smartphones.  Some of the students have run into a problem where photos that they have taken in portrait mode rotate into landscape mode when they add them to their story map.  Any ideas on why this might happen and if there is a fix?

Thanks in advance,

Allen Risley

GIS Specialist

Cal State University San Marcos

[KevinHighland]

I doubt that it is the Story Map that is doing the rotating. I often have problems with when taking a photo with an iPhone/iPad where the orientation doesn't come out correctly when I send the file.

I would recommend checking each photo on a PC before uploading them to your app.

[AllenRisley]

I'm thinking that you are right - it's probably not the story map.  I have never had this problem, but I have an Android phone and usually inspect photos before uploading them.  These students may very well have been using an iPhone for the pictures.  I will add a step to the procedure where they inspect the photos before uploading them.

Thanks for the idea.

AR

[RupertEssinger]

I concur with the other replies here. We've not heard of an issue with the Story Map Tour rotating images differently from their stored format. I have definitely experienced sending a picture from an iPhone to my PC via email and finding it unexpectedly being rotated when I open it on my PC. In those cases I found I had to open and save the image in Windows Paint to get the correct orientation to stick.

Rupert

[NevinDawson]

I am having the same issue in my Story Map Journal (inserting image into story sidebar) and see no evidence that it's caused by my phone or computer. The image is portrait on my phone, online on Google Photos, and in the Windows photo viewer after downloading the file. The dimensions in the metadata list the small number (width) first and large number (height) second. In landscape format images, the numbers are reversed. As soon as I upload it to the Story Map, it is always landscape with no option to change it. If I rotate it 90 degrees with computer software to try to compensate and save/upload again it, it stays rotated to the right after upload. I can't see how this could be caused by anything other than the Story Map interface. Any ideas?

[StephenSylvia]

Nevin, I'm sorry you are having issues uploading your photo. Can you provide some more information?

• Are you able to upload the photo as an attachment so we can check the photo orientation saved in the exif data?
• What did you use take your photo? Camera Model? Smartphone (type?).
• What version of Windows are you running?
• Did you try rotating your photo with the Window's photo viewer? Our app relies on exif data to automatically rotate the photo on upload. The exif data is the standard way of setting the photo's orientation and is the method used by camera and smartphone manufacturers. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not set the exif orientation when rotating a photo through the windows photo viewer so you will need to use a different photo editor to rotate the photo.

[NevinDawson]

Thanks for the response. The photo is below, and, as you can see, is in portrait orientation. The EXIF data lists the width as the smaller dimension and the height as the larger dimension. I have tried opening it with Adobe Photoshop Express, Photoshop CC 2015.5, the Windows Photo viewer, and Paint, and all of them open the image in portrait orientation. I took the photo with the native camera app on my LG G4 Android smartphone. The image was automatically synced to Google Photos and then I downloaded it from there to my Windows 10 Pro laptop. I've tried it with one other portrait photo with the same results. Any thoughts?

[StephenSylvia]

Nevin, Can you upload the photo as an attachment (preferably in a zip file). You may need to us the Advanced editor (top right corner when you're adding a post). When you just insert the image, it strips all the exif data from the image.

[NevinDawson]

Ok, here you go.

[StephenSylvia · Accepted solution]

Nevin, I took a closer look and our Map Journal app uses a different version of our photo uploader code which does not rotate the photo based off exif data. We've added it to the issue tracker so we can get it in the next release.

For the time being, I recommend rotating the photos as before then strip try stripping the exif data before uploading: What Is EXIF Data, and How Can I Remove It From My Photos?