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Old 08-30-2007, 09:49 PM   #1
maracle
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So I've been spending a lot of time trying to get my photos all organized in Flickr. One thing I found really annoying is that the windows preview program doesn't auto-rotate your pics when you view them if they're vertically oriented, which can make it awkward to really see how good a photo is (especially compared to a horizontal shot of the same thing).

Of course most online sites rotate them automatically. I found a pretty good summary of the orientation flag here:
http://www.impulseadventure.com/phot...ientation.html

It seems like rotating is a really minor little detail but it actually turns out some programs will screw up your photos if you rotate with them.

Here's the cliff's notes:
1) Window's Picture Viewer will wipe out your EXIF data if you rotate a picture. It immediately saves over the old photo when you rotate rather than just rotating it on your screen and giving you the option to save later, and for some reason it doesn't bother to keep the metadata on the picture (like the timestamp when you took it, the orientation flag, camera and exposure info, etc). So be really careful when using Windows Picture Viewer, or just avoid it!

2) Irfanview is a nice viewer for photos, with more options than Windows Picture Viewer. There's an option in the properties to auto-rotate based on the orientation flag. Its also completely free.

3) You can get simple little programs that will rotate your images so they're all the right orientation by default. You just point them at a folder of files and it looks for anything that isn't right side up by default and rotates it (or you can use them when initially copying from your camera to your computer to do it at that time)

4) Not every program can rotate without losing some image detail...so check before you use a program to rotate an image to make sure it can do lossless JPEG rotation.
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Old 08-30-2007, 10:42 PM   #2
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I thought this was going to be about the virtues of gay photos, in line with bi photos, and - of course- the commonplace straight photo.

All kidding aside, this is a great post, Maracle.

In regards to Picture Viewer, the bottom line is if the software came with or in Windows, it probably sucks (MS Paint anyone??)

There are tons of apps out there that will treat your photos right... In fact, although we're all prone to ditch the software that comes with our digital cameras, I know that Canon's automatically orients the photos when they're downloaded.. And then you have your Picasa (from Google) which maintains EXIF data, as well as a bunch of shareware apps for Flickr.

One thing to keep in mind is that as popular as online photo storage/organization/sharing sites are (i.e. Picasaweb, Flickr, Snapfish, etc.) they should *NOT* be used as your primary storage. Many of them resize/compress your photos when you upload them... It's astounding how many people I've seen upload their stuff to Ofoto or whatnot, download it later to print, and wonder why the print quality sucks. Ooops!

Anyway, there are a LOT of great tools out there. And a good number of crappy ones. Very few of them come out to a complete solution. Until that comes along, make sure you keep all your originals (back them up to DVD or external hard drives or something), don't save your edited/cropped/email-size photos over the originals (Use the "Save as..." function!), and for the love of god, take a few minutes and give titles, captions or tags when uploading to Flickr or whatnot!

Ok, that last one is a personal preference, but still... names like DSC40001 don't really help me figure out what/where/who the photo is!
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Old 08-30-2007, 10:46 PM   #3
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Oooh, also remember that EXIF can be your enemy, as Tech TV cutie Cat Schwartz found out: http://www.geocities.com/cat_nude/ (Not necessarily safe for work/school)
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Old 08-30-2007, 11:35 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by omisan View Post
Oooh, also remember that EXIF can be your enemy, as Tech TV cutie Cat Schwartz found out: http://www.geocities.com/cat_nude/ (Not necessarily safe for work/school)
Haha, nice....you always have to be careful about what is hidden in documents!

Anyway one of the reasons I decided to upload all my stuff to Flickr is that it doesn't compress/resize your originals, they're available in all the original glory. The free accounts have pretty crummy limits (I think 200 photos total and 100 megabytes of uploads per month) but a pro account is only $24 a year and gives you unlimited storage. I haven't used Picasa but I'm guessing anything Google makes doesn't screw with your originals and gives plenty of space. But all the photo printing sites are definitely the ones to watch for problems (snapfish, etc).


I'm just feeling lucky that I haven't had a hard drive fail completely in the last few years, I had photos all the way back to 2003 that I had never backed up. So stupid, I must have good karma because thats a long time to risk them just sitting on my computer!
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Old 08-31-2007, 12:10 AM   #5
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Yeah I did the same with flickr, we should be contacts! I love that service, I just today stumbled upon an unmarked burned cd and tossed it in the comp to discover my long lost mexico roadtrip pics. I was super stoked so I quickly tossed them up on flickr for safe keeping and saved a copy on an external harddrive as well. I am in the process of using Flickrdown to get my pics off of flickr so I can save them on an external drive. For now though Flickr is the only copy I have of most of them.
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Old 08-31-2007, 07:41 AM   #6
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Sounds good, my username on Flickr is umichbrett if anyone else wants to see pics.

I was just looking at the Flickr blog for the first time and those guys travel all over the place for Flickr parties. Korea august 23rd, Manila the 25th, Kuala Lampur the 28th....

Time to apply for a job? Seems a bit fast paced though.
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