X3Photo Gallery Forums

Hi. So basically, this would be caused by images with their "orientation" stored in EXIF, instead of physically. This has always been causing problems, because there are a few complications. Here are some details:

• If you use the RESIZE option when uploading images from the X3 panel, images will automatically get rotated to match the EXIF rotation.
• If you DON'T use the RESIZE option, your uploaded images may have wrong rotation, with orientation only stored in EXIF.
• In this case, there are desktop tools that will fix the orientation for images, prior to upload.
• Indeed, most new browsers now already support EXIF orientation. However, width and height attributes will match the physical orientation and not the EXIF orientation, so it gets quite complicated.
• Furthermore, we can't just enable images to rotate by EXIF orientation from X3, because that may cause problems for images that have previously been rotated to match the exif orientation.

Hope the above makes some sense. You can send me a link or send one of the images if you want me to verify the cause. Your ultimate solution, would be to resolve the physical orientation (from EXIF orientation) by using a tool on desktop prior to upload.

There may be different options for you, but you should then understand how it works.

sound_and_light wrote: Thanks, Karl.  I confess I have been using FTP to transfer directly to directories.   :slight_smile:  So I guess
maybe I should stop that?

Not necessarily. You can still upload via FTP, but then as you can see, you might end up with images stored with EXIF orientation. If you want to avoid this problem and still upload via FTP, you would need to correct the orientation BEFORE uploading. Personally, I use ImageOptim (Mac only) ... You just run your images through it (with lossless compression if you like), and it will at the same time convert EXIf orientation to physical orientation. If you use Windows, you would need to find another similar app.

If you upload the images from the X3 control panel, you would still need to make sure the [x]Resize button was checked, so that it could convert the EXIF orientation to physical orientation on upload.

sound_and_light wrote:I also make directories on my FTP client... is
that bad, too?  :upside_down:

This is also not a problem.

One thing to be aware of, when uploading images and creating folders via FTP:
Because CACHE does not automatically get refreshed when you upload/create via FTP, you may still need to access the X3 control panel and click SAVE (from anywhere), just to force a cache refresh. Otherwise, you might find the X3 does not show the new folders or images added by FTP.

sound_and_light wrote: I deleted all the photos in a folder and re-uploaded them via the imagevue tool.
Some strange effects... some of the photos look correct in the folder-level grid, but when
I click on them, some jump to another orientation!  See below.  These look fine when
expanded!

Now you might have another problem, namely browser cache. It might be displaying old photos when clicked, instead of the new ones, as it's likely the images with same file names are cached in browser. To verify this, you would need to view the website in a new browser private/incognito window (without cache). Cache is a bit clumsy, and that's why sometimes you need to rename the images, or rename the folder they are contained inside, to make sure the browser doesn't show cached version.

If you have a link, I can take a closer look.

sound_and_light wrote:ImageOptim --  I don't think compression is an issue,

That wasn't my point. My point is that an app like ImageOptim, will FIX the rotation problem. Basically it converts the EXIF orientation to physical orientation. Thus, the images will be fixed prior to upload. Just drop them into ImageOptim, assign "lossless", and it will fix your exif issue and possibly make the file size smaller without affecting quality. Many similar apps will do this.

sound_and_light wrote:I just want the photos to have the right orientation in grids and keep it when expanded.
If I use ImageOptim to fix orientation, can I FTP them once processed, or do I then need
to use the imagevue tool?  I need a good build process. :)

You can use either FTP or X3 panel. But you need to consider the issue noted above about browser cache, and you need to see my previous post about clicking "save" in X3 settings if you decide to upload by FTP.

There are many levels of cache, from X3 (server), proxy (Cloudflare) and browser cache. However, there is a big difference between images getting cached by request, and pages getting cached ... X3 will never cache pages with images that are not there, unless you are using "preload: manual" and forgot to re-publish (unlikely).

sound_and_light wrote:I just deleted many files from a directory via ftp.

This is likely the issue. You need to enter the X3 control panel, and click SAVE (without doing anything). Because you have made changes manually with FTP, X3 doesn't know changes have been made, and will therefore try to use existing page cache.

It's necessary with page cache of course, else x3 would need to read images in dirs for every single visitor before rendering the page. However, it can only detect "changes" when done from the panel. If you make changes by FTP, you will need to manually refresh by clicking "save" in panel.