Rotating the image doesnвЂ™t exactly help, either. Some programsвЂ“especially older image programsвЂ“willВ just load the image and ignore theВ Exif Orientation tag, displayingВ the image in its original, unrotated state.В Newer programs that obey Exif tags will show the image with its correct rotation, so an image may appear to have different rotations in different applications. Unfortunately, not every piece of softwareВ obeys this Exif tag. The image data is saved in its original, unrotated form, but the Exif tag allows applications to correct it. In theory, then, you could open that photo with anВ application, it would look at the Exif tags, and thenВ present the photo in the correct rotation to you. ItВ adds this information to the Exif dataВ that all photos have (which includesВ the model of camera you took it with, the orientation, and possibly even the GPS location where the photo was taken).

So rather than performing the computationally intensive task of rotating the entire image, the camera would add a small piece of data to the file, noting which orientation the image should be in. Digital camera hardware just couldnвЂ™t handle saving the image directly in rotated form. RELATED: What Is EXIF Data, and How Can I Remove It From My Photos? If you take an image in portrait mode, theВ camera knows and can act accordingly so you donвЂ™t have to rotate it yourself. The sensor detects which way youвЂ™re holding the camera, in an effort to rotate the photos properly. Manufacturers wanted to solve this annoyance, so they added rotation sensors to modern digital cameras and smartphones. The rotated image would appear the same in every programвЂ¦as long as you took the time to manually rotate them all. The image editor would move the pixels toВ rotate the image, modifying the actual image data. You could then use an image editor program to rotate the image to appear in its correct portrait orientation.

So, even if you used a camera and held it vertically to take a photo in portrait mode, that photo would be saved sideways, in landscape mode. Digital cameras didnвЂ™t bother rotating images automatically.

Traditionally, computers have always rotated imagesВ by moving the actual pixels in the image.

Rotating a photo in photos for mac