Why do some smartphone photos come out upside down?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #65, I look at various ways that smartphone pictures can end up
sideways or upside down when viewed on a computer.

Upside down pictures?

Yea, there’s a couple.

For the most part, smartphones often have what they consider to be a
“right-side up.” In other words, they expect the camera to be held a certain
way or the phone to be held a certain way when taking a photograph. That then
becomes “up and down.”

The problem is that for many phones, what you and I might consider to be
“right side up” – isn’t – or it’s arbitrary.

Which way is up?

When you take a look at a phone (other than the scenario where you’re
actually using it as a phone), very often there is no obvious right side up,
especially if you’re holding it in what I would call “landscape mode”
– sideways.

Whether you twist it to the right or to the left makes no difference to you
or me – and quite often no difference to the software in the phone. But, the
phone may still have a concept of:

• Twist it this way and you’re right side up;

• Twist it the other way and you’re upside down.

Many phones (and I believe most actually these days) try and
automatically sense which way you’re holding the phone.

They have a little accelerometer in there that actually will tell whether
the phone is being held twisted right ways, or left way. They’ll automatically
sense that down is down and they’ll adjust the photograph accordingly.

So, the chances are it will be right side up when it gets to
you.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work. It doesn’t always work correctly.
And it gets further complicated because very often the software on the
receiving side (whatever software is being used to display the photograph) may
not interpret the photograph correctly. It may in fact try to do its own
version of “I think this is the way it should be.” And it could be wrong.

Sideways phone pictures

We see this a lot.

You see this all the time, actually, with smartphone pictures that have been
uploaded to Facebook (or some place like that) and they’ll be uploaded sideways
– because the software assumes that all photographs are done sideways, in
landscape mode, and not in portrait mode.

So you end up having to twist your head to actually see the photograph.

Rotate graphically

The good news is that most viewing software has quick ways to actually
rotate the photograph: either 90 degrees (right or left), or 180 degrees (to
turn it all upside down.)

The software that I use is
FastStone Image Viewer. But, like I said, most viewers have some kind of an
option for this: it’s a keystroke or two to turn it or adjust it.

I think in FastStone’s case, just typing “R” or “L” will rotate the
photograph 90 degrees right or left – and it will actually allow you to then
save the result of that if you want to or leave the photograph unmodified;
leave it however FastStone found it.

It is a common problem. There’s no common thread to it.

Different phones and different cameras treat things different ways. That’s
sort of unfortunate – and kind of the nature of the fact that cell phones,
smartphones, can be held any number of different ways.

So, the best I can offer to you is to make sure that whatever software you’re
using to view the photograph has the ability to rotate it appropriately (so
that it makes sense to you). Then consider saving that rotated copy as a copy
(so that you’re not disturbing the original) and then use that rotated copy,
that looks correct, for whatever it is you are wanting to do with the
photograph.