Photos: Change image orientation through the user interface

[Linkandzelda]

It would be very nice to have the ability to edit the photos and have the option to crop and rotate them.

[lastzero]

We already have an orientation field in our index that is used to fix the rotation. However it would be best to fix orientation directly in the image (exif header) so that all apps show it correctly and you don't have to manually fix it every time.

Actual photo editing is out of scope for now, there are other projects (incl Photoshop) that provide this already in great quality. Note that many users don't want us to modify their originals at all, not even rename them.

[JohanAR]

Would it be easy to expose this orientation field in the edit dialog?

[lastzero]

Might be added to the files tab in addition to "Portrait: Yes/No"... note that the orientation might be different for each file in a stack (files that belong together):

[spupuz]

i would love this too, also move from album to album or delete a pic

[Engr-AllanG]

upvoting simple rotation would be great. Ideally from the main photo view, but in the edit window would make sense as well.

[lleibovici]

Another vote for exposing the orientation and the ability to change it.

[tootbrute]

YES! Agreed that actual photo editing is out of scope for Photoprism, but making it easier to 'rotate' the photo or video would be soooo great.

[bmajik]

Perhaps a sidecar file could contain deferred transformations. In various circumstances (photoprism display, photoprism download, etc) the deferred transformations are (optionally) combined with the original image to produce the derived image.

For performance reasons, derived images could also be stored in the writable storage, like sidecar files and thumbnails...

Certainly, rotate and crop could be implemented this way.

[issuehunt-oss]

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[Zaijo]

I'd fund an issue which would do it like @lastzero suggested, because after a few years a better tool might come (I'll need to migrate) and the rotation marks would be lost.

fix orientation directly in the image (exif header) so that all apps show it correctly and you don't have to manually fix it every time

[darrepac]

I vote for having the capability to lossless rotate the picture, and that it rotates the original picture.
We may miss some rotation and when we see it through photoprism, it makes sense to be able to do it directly

[FreshMosh]

I agree, photo editing is out of scope for photoprism.
Yet it would be nice to have some features I consider basic, mainly rotation and cropping.

Reason:
I want Photoprism to become a viable Google Photos replacement for me and my family. And while all people in my family really like making, sharing and viewing photos and images, non of them likes to edit them. They just use cropping feature of Google Photos. Never used anything else.

Btw: the way Google handles this is by creating a copy of the original file, which will be edited and then considered the current version of this file.

[iGadget]

Actually, I almost thought that with photoprism, I had found the perfect replacement for Google Photos. But alas, lack of these basic editing functions (rotating and cropping I consider the bare minimum) are a showstopper for me and definitely for all the folks I'm trying to steer away from Big Tech.
What would it take to get this on the road?

[lastzero]

Right now we work on face detection. You're welcome to become a sponsor so that we can eventually grow our team to get more done in less time.

[darrepac]

Actually, I almost thought that with photoprism, I had found the perfect replacement for Google Photos. But alas, lack of these basic editing functions (rotating and cropping I consider the bare minimum) are a showstopper for me and definitely for all the folks I'm trying to steer away from Big Tech.
What would it take to get this on the road?

On my side it is more the lack of infinite scrolling / timeline view à la Google Photo / Onedrive / Apple … but good work has already be done!

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[stolp]

After spending 20 minutes with trying out that otherwise great application, I was deeply missing an image rotate feature.

Especially for first time users uploading their camera content, it is more or less mandatory to have.

[lastzero]

We're working on expanding our team. There are tons of feature requests, can't do everything at the same time. You can support us by becoming a sponsor.

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[melyux]

It may be better for this not to touch the original file, and instead create a sidecar alongside the image. I think someone had mentioned above that Google creates a copy of the image when it's rotated through the UI without touching the original

[lastzero]

Only the header is updated, not the image itself. It was an explicit requirement from most users we spoke to that it is implemented this way so all software shows the file in the correct orientation and not just PhotoPrism, knowing where the secret modified file is.

[nullfreizeit]

Ok understood, but would it be not better / possible to change this in the settings to show pictures always in the correct orientation? Thanks

[lastzero]

The pictures are always shown in the intended orientation, it's just that some cameras get the metadata wrong or have bad sensors.

[dessalines]

I have a ton of photos like this one:

#464 (comment)

Photoprism has the orientation field correct, but isn't actually using that info, so the orientation is sideways. Why doesn't photoprism use the orientation field to turn the photos upright?

[lastzero]

Do you use our official Docker image?

[dessalines]

yep: image: photoprism/photoprism:latest

[lastzero]

Then this should be fixed, however you may need to recreate your JPEGs if they were created with an affected version:

• HEIC: Converted JPG has wrong orientation #1064

[dessalines]

Two things:

• This also affects my original images (which are wepb). The orientation in photoprism correctly shows as
  for the webp file, but when I download it, the orientation is wrong.
• The jpg orientation is incorrect. How recently did this heif library get updated in the photoprism docker image? I just scanned my photos like 2 weeks ago, and many of them have this issue.
• Is there a quick way to rescan / regenerate jpgs a single photo to verify that it works?

[lastzero]

It's best to use GitHub Discussions to figure this out so not everyone gets an email notification for each new comment. For the start, you can use our demo to verify it's an unfixed issue. If so, we require a sample file as screenshots are not enough for us to reproduce what you report.

[dessalines]

Verified bug: https://demo.photoprism.app/library/folders/art9w3jma2muz7xn/view#&gid=1&pid=1

Its displaying sideways, even tho the original's orientation is correct.

Should I open up a new issue?

It won't let me attach the .webp file to github, but you can download it from that link.

[lastzero]

For WebP, we have never tested orientation metadata as it's not a native photo format. What software creates WebP with the wrong oritentation and then fixes it with metadata? I thought your main issue was with HEIC / HEIF, which is fixed and was related to an external tool we use. If you believe oritentation metadata for WebP is critical to users, you can open a feature request but not a bug. If you like, we can add it to known issues instead.

[hydrandt]

Works great! Just tried with the :preview docker tag. A detail: after the changes are saved, and I go back to the gallery, I need to refresh the page to see the picture rotated. Also, it would be really handy to have a shortcut for this, so that we can rotate a picture when just viewing it:)

[lastzero]

Thanks for testing! Maybe in the viewer, users might not want to rotate an image permanently?

[hydrandt]

Good question. For me personally, that's the way I would like to have it: The most commons operations are deleting, and rotating, when the phone gets it wrong. It would be great to be able to delete with the delete key, and rotate with, idk, l/r, and for each set if the action should be done immediately, or with a confirmation (or save, for rotating) dialog.

[lastzero]

In that case, we need to implement it twice. Once for the owner, once for guests.