Solved [EXIF] Issue with "Orientation" info

[yetanotherlogin]

Hello,

Recently, I had to return my Sony DSC-HX20V for repair, and since then, I noticed a problem when taking pictures vertically, ie. when turning the camera at a 90° angle.

Before, those pictures would be displayed in Irfanview's Thumbnails application vertically. But now, they are displayed horizontally, so I have to apply a 90° rotation before they're displayed "right".

I attached an example.

I noticed that in the EXIF data, those pictures have "Orientation - Right top", which changes to "Orientation - Top left" once they've been rotated in IrfanView and saved with default settings (ie. with "Keep original EXIF data" checked.)

As I suspect the camera's software to have been reset during repair, I went through the camera's settings but found nothing that looked like it could explain that change.

Anybody knows what I could try?

Thank you.

[Mij]

Is what you posted an example of how the images come from the camera or is it one that has been rotated and saved again?

Attached is how it should be when it comes from the camera.
In Irfanview if "Auto-rotate image according to EXIF info" is checked in the JPG/PCD/GIF tab of Properties/Options then this image will be correctly displayed with the tower pointing upwards in both the Viewer and the Thumbnail windows.
In Windows Explorer though the icon will show the tower pointing to the left as in the Attached Thumbnail icon below.

If the EXIF tab is being changed from Right Top to Top Left by Irfanview then either you have checked the "Reset EXIF Orientation tag" in the JPG format Save Options or you have being using the JPG lossless operations to do the rotation. The JPG lossless operations automatically save the image with the EXIF orientation tag reset.

[yetanotherlogin]

The picture was straight from the camera, with no editing/saving on the computer.

With default settings, Thumbnails would display the tip of the Eiffel tower pointing to the right: Unchecking "Auto-rotate image according to EXIF info" in Options > Properties/Options put things back to normal.

Maybe that option was enabled by default when I upgraded recently from 4.3? to 4.38.

Thanks for the tip.

--
Edit : Incidently, is there an add-on to IrfanView's Thumbnails simply to clean the Orientation item in EXIF, without editing files any further? If not, a third-party application instead?

[Mij]

Your settings are not altered when you upgrade to a new version of Irfanview. They are all stored in an initialization file, i_view32.ini , which remains unchanged.
Only if that file is deleted does Irfanview use default values for settings not yet defined by the user.

Re. your Edit question. What exactly do you want to do?
Uncheck the "Auto-rotate ...." option. Your image in post #1 now appears with the tower pointing up. If you saved it again with "Reset orientation tag..." checked it would always be that way, a Portrait format image, whether Auto-rotate was On or Off. Is that what you want?
If you want it to be as in post#2 you will need to rotate the image to the left and save it with "Reset orientation tag.." unchecked. It will then be as most camera images are and only be displayed as a Portrait image when "Auto-rotate.." is On.