EXIF tags · Reference
EXIF Orientation: why a photo rotates or mirrors
EXIF Orientation describes how a viewer should display stored pixels. Rotating the pixels and leaving the old orientation tag in place can make another application rotate the image a second time.
By ExifGrabber · Sources reviewed · Editorial standards
The eight orientation values
Orientation is tag 0x0112 in IFD0, stored as a SHORT. These descriptions express the display transform from the stored image.
| Value | Display transform |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identity |
| 2 | Mirror horizontally |
| 3 | Rotate 180° |
| 4 | Mirror vertically |
| 5 | Transpose across the top-left / bottom-right diagonal |
| 6 | Rotate 90° clockwise |
| 7 | Transpose across the top-right / bottom-left diagonal |
| 8 | Rotate 270° clockwise |
Sources: ExifTool EXIF tag definitions
Read the raw orientation value
The numeric output makes it easier to compare your application’s handling with the table. If the tag is missing, record it as missing; it does not prove the file was captured without rotation.
exiftool -G1 -a -s -n -Orientation photo.jpgA reliable image-processing pipeline
Choose one place in the pipeline to apply orientation. Once the transform is baked into pixels, write normal orientation or remove the obsolete instruction in the output. Check what the decoder already does before adding a manual transform.
Use an asymmetric test image with labeled corners to exercise all eight cases. A simple landscape photograph may hide a mirror error. Check output dimensions as well as corner positions for the four transforms that exchange width and height.
Why stripping metadata can change appearance
If the pixels still depend on the orientation tag, deleting it can change their displayed direction. Inspect the cleaned output in another viewer before distributing it.
A screenshot captures a rendered appearance, but it is a new image with its own export behavior. It is not a faithful preservation of the original file or its metadata.
Related references and tools
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