Category: iOS

How to Upload Images Right-Side-Up

A frequently asked question on the Internet is:

“My photo appears correct on my computer, but when I uploaded it to [website], it is sideways. How can I make my image upload in the correct orientation?”

This problem is surprisingly universal, it affects many different web sites and users of Windows, Macintosh, tablets and smartphones are all affected. It most often affects photos that were taken in portrait orientation.

Local Image Correct Orientation
Uploaded Image Sideways

The problem is caused by the varying interpretations of the image rotation tags in the EXIF data accompanying digital photos. This problem is not likely to go away anytime soon because the meaning of the rotation tags is somewhat ambiguous, and there is disagreement about what the correct way to handle them ought to be. Some software thinks it should apply the tags, other programs or sites think they should ignore the tags or remove the tags.

There is an easy solution for users: Edit the photo in your photo editor of choice (with the possible exception of Windows Picture Viewer). Rotate it to be right-side-up if necessary. Then make some other change that affects the image. Tweak the contrast or the color. Crop the image slightly. Almost any change will work. Then, save it.

The saved image will have its pixels oriented properly and have no Orientation tag, or have the default Horizontal tag. Everybody agrees on how to display an image like that. When you upload it, it will display the same as you saw it on your computer.

If you edit an image, but only rotate it, your editor will probably just change the Orientation tag without changing the image pixels. Unfortunately, not every program or site will interpret the Orientation tag the same way as your image editor.

If you make a change to the actual image, it forces the program to completely re-write the image from scratch, which results in an image with the default orientation.

May Meeting Notes: Contacts and Calendars

Here’s some useful information from this month’s meeting on Contacts and Calendars.

The contacts and calendars apps exist on both the Mac (computers) and iOS (iPad & iPhone). The different versions can cooperate and share data via iCloud, but they are not the same. The Mac version can do some things, such as edit contact groups that the iOS version cannot do.

Here is Apple’s Support Article on Contacts for the Mac.  It is an overview of Contacts and how to use them.

And, similarly, here is Apple’s Support Article on Calendars on the Mac.

Besides Apple’s pre-defined Holiday calendar and your own calendars, you may find public calendars for various topics and groups on-line which you can subscribe to. For example, here is the MacMAD meeting calendar.  If you subscribe to that, you will see our monthly meetings. If any changes are made, you will see the changes automatically.

The Shortcuts App for iOS

Dennis Crowley presented on Shortcuts for the iPhone and iPad at our February meeting.

Shortcuts is a new scripting tool for iOS. Although it has more potential than anything Apple has released recently, it is widely under appreciated. Many people have never heard of it.

Shortcuts lets you easily create and use your own scripts for commonly performed actions on iOS. You can also use many pre-existing scripts which are freely available.

Although Shortcuts is an Apple app, and is free, it may not be installed on your device by default. You can get it from the App Store.

Here are the slides from that talk. Note that many of the slides contain links to more information. The slides are shared in Apple Keynote format through iCloud.

 

June 2018 WWDC Notes

At this month’s meeting we are reviewing the announcements from Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference Keynote. As usual, MacMAD is providing links so that you don’t need to take notes in the meeting.

The announcements fell into three subject areas:

The Apple TV and Apple Watch (PDF)

iOS 12 – New system for the iPhone and iPad (Pages document) or (view as PDF)

MacOS Mojave – New system for the Macintosh (RTF Text Edit document)