Question: I’m new to my Mac. I added a primary photo. The photo appears in portrait mode when I double click on it, but appears in landscape in RM. I tried rotating it using Preview, and the rotation shows when I double click on the photo, but not in RM. I’m on the most current version of Tahoe and most current version of RM. I recently migrated from Windows to Mac, so I’m not new to RM. How do I get RM to show the primary photo the same as if I double clicked on it? Thanks.
This is a well known problem. I’m a Windows user, so I would rather a Mac user answer some of the specific details of this problem.
The problem is that JPG files can include what is called an EXIF Orientation Tag. This tag can be used to rotate or reflect a JPG image without actually rotating it or reflecting it. Instead, the software showing the image on the screen rotates or reflects the image on the screen without actually rotating it or reflecting it on disk. Typically, you as the user don’t even know that the file is sideways on the disk because it looks correct on the screen.
What has happened with your image is that it’s actually rotated so that it’s sideways. But for the most part, you can’t tell that it’s sideways because its EXIF Orientation Tag is set to rotate it automatically on the screen even though it’s sideways on the disk. And most software will honor the EXIF Orientation Tag. But RM itself will not honor the EXIF Orientation Tag, so the image looks sideways in RM the way it really is on disk.
Until RM adds support for the EXIF Orientation Tag, your only solution is to edit the image from outside of RM with software that actually rotates the image on disk. I don’t know the best way or ways to do that on a Mac.
Whether you are using WIndows or a Mac, you need to be careful that the process of rotating the image on the disk doesn’t cause it to lose a little resolution. The JPG format is known to be a lossy format. That means that if you open it and save it, it typically loses a little bit of resolution. If the same JPG file goes through multiple open and save cycles, the image can become very grainy. The same thing can happen just with rotating a jpg image. You don’t actually have to edit the file to lose some resolution. So if you are editing or rotating a JPG image, you need to be sure to do so with software that will do what is called a lossless edit or a lossless rotation.
2 Likes