Tag: image metadata

Pictures that are copied in using Windows Explorer may not always appear the right way up

A problem that can surface with some photos that you view using your Smart TV, set-top device or similar equipment is that they don’t appear the right way up.

It happens more so with those pictures that come in from an email whether as attachments or downloadable links, or from a cloud-storage service. Similarly it also happens if you transfer the pictures from your device to your computer using the operating-system’s file manager i.e. Windows / File Explorer or MacOS Finder by using the file-copy procedure. This latter process is something most of us do when we want to make digital pictures that we took at someone’s location available on their computer.

These cameras record information about the photo orientation as part of the picture file when you click the shutter

The main problem is that today’s cameras and mobile devices record the orientation of the photo in the file that represents the image as part of machine-readable EXIF metadata. Most of the file managers recognise this metadata and use it for creating the thumbnail that is seen for each file. Similarly, when you upload photos to an image-sharing or social-media site, you will find that these pictures will be shown the right way up thanks to this metadata. It is also true of image management software which even creates copies of the imported files that are the “right way up” as part of the image-import process.

Copying photos from your camera using Windows / File Explorer or other file managers may not guarantee the best results with photo-rotation metadata

But a lot of hardware media players like smart TVs, set-top devices and electronic picture frames don’t recognise this EXIF picture-orientation flag and show the picture with the incorrect orientation. It can be exacerbated with DLNA media-streaming setups where the DLNA media server doesn’t use this flag to rotate the picture to the correct orientation when it is being served to the client device. The same problem also extends to some photo-viewer and presentation software that doesn’t understand the EXIF photo-orientation tag properly.

Another situation that always surfaces with photo orientation is if you are photographing something on a table, floor or similar horizontal surface. Here, the camera or smartphone doesn’t properly register the orientation due to the orientation sensor being driven by gravity. In this situation you would still have to manually rotate the image even if you were importing it with software that understood this EXIF orientation metadata.

How can you work around these problem when you want to show images that are drawn in from email or copied over from that digital camera?

Cast To Device option to show picture on DLNA video player – may not always work properly with the EXIF photo-orientation metadata

One way would be to open each portrait image using a photo editor or bitmap image editor that understands the EXIF photo-orientation tag like Windows Paint or Adobe Photoshop, then save the image as a JPEG file using the software’s Save As command. This will typically rotate the image the right way up and strip off confusing EXIF tags. It would appeal to situations where you are preparing a folder of photos to be shown, perhaps on a USB stick or using “Cast To Device / Play To Device” on your Windows computer and a DLNA-capable video device.

For Windows users, especially those who regularly copy photos to their computer using Windows Explorer / File Explorer, there is a free program that can batch-rotate photos in a folder correctly. The program is called JPEG Autorotate and is freely available from its author’s site. Once installed, it appears as a secondary-menu (right-click) option to allow you to rotate a single image or all the photos in a folder including the subfolders without quality loss.

If you are using a computer as the primary storage or “staging post” for your digital image collection, the best path is to use the photo import functionality that is part of the image management software installed on it. Typically this will be Windows Photos, Windows Photo Gallery or Photos for MacOS (formerly iPhoto) that will be with your operating system. As well, make sure that the “rotate photos on import” option is selected in your software’s import settings.

This information will help you with making sure that digital pictures appear the right way up no matter the device you are using.

Facebook started it. Windows Live Photo Gallery has implemented it since the 2010 version and made it easier with the 2011 version.

What is people-tagging

The feature I am talking about here is the ability to attach a metadata tag that identifies a particular person that appear in a digital image. These implementations typically have the tag applied to a specific area of the photo, usually defining the face or head of the person concerned. It will also become available in current or up-and-coming versions of other image-management programs, photo-sharing services, DLNA media servers and the like.

In the case of DLNA media servers, one of these programs could scan an image library and make a UPnP AV content-directory “tree” based on the people featured in one’s photo library.

Initially the concept, especially the Facebook implementation, was treated with fear and scorn because of privacy invasion. This is because this implementation allows the metadata to be related to particular Facebook Friends and also allows the photo to be commented on by other Facebook Friends. Now the Windows Live Photo Gallery application attaches this metadata in a standardised XML form to the JPEG file like it does with the description tags and geotags. There is the ability to make a copy of this file without the metadata for use in posting to Internet services.

A relevant implementation idea

One key benefit that I would see with this data when implemented with electronic picture frames, HDTVs and similar devices is the ability to overlay the tags over the picture when it is shown. This could be achieved by the user pressing a “display” or similar button on the device or its remote control. Devices with touchscreens, stylus-operated tablet screens or other pointer-driven “absolute” navigation setups could support a function that shows a “people tag” as you touch areas of the image.

Benefit to Alzheimers sufferers

Here, this feature could help people who suffer from Alzheimer’s or other dementia-related illnesses by helping them remember whom their family members or friends are. If the user is using an image-management program or DLNA media-server setup capable of using these tags, they can call up a collection of images of the person they think of and have those images appearing on the screen. If the device has a communications-terminal function like a telephone, one of the images can be used as an index image to remember the correspondent by. This function could be extended by the use of an automatically-updated index image or a screenshow that shows “key” images of the person.

Improving on the idea

To make this work, there needs to be an industry standard that defines how the people-tag metadata is stored on the JPEG file. As well, the standard has to support functions like one or more separate “nickname” fields for each of the people that can be displayed as an option.  This is because a person may be known to one or more other people via a nickname or relative-shortcut name (Mummy, Daddy, Nonna, etc).

Another issue is to encourage users to establish consistency whenever they tag up a collection of images. This could be achieved through “batch-tagging” and / or improved facial recognition in image-management tools. This may be an issue if two or more people are tagging images from their own collections to serve a third collection and they know the people via different names.

Conclusion

Once we cut through the hysteria surrounding people-tagging with digital images and focus on using it as part of desktop image-management systems rather than social networks, we can then see it as a tool for helping people remember whom their loved ones are.