topic Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape in ArcGIS StoryMaps Questions

Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:08:56 GMT

This is probably the silliest thing I've ever come across. I have dozens of portrait images I'd like to add to a story map and at no extra charge, the story map flips the orientation.

There are several different articles going back to 2017 of people saying 'rotate it 90 degrees and then back again before uploading' or 'strip out the exif metadata'. Huh? It's 2020; I spent a boatload of money to get high res, georeferenced photos on an iPhone 11 Pro Max, and I have to mess around them to get them into a story map?

Please say it isn't so...

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

DanPatterson — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:34:52 GMT

or the save to your desktop first suggestion?

https://community.esri.com/thread/232817-keeping-images-properly-oriented

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Fri, 15 May 2020 02:08:04 GMT

Tried it and it still flips it.

Installed piexif and and ran piexif.remove(filename.jpeg) and then added that to the story map and it still flips it.

All I want to do is share my pictures of petrified wood with something a little more sophisticated than a shared google album. I got a couple dozen more just like this:

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

DanPatterson — Fri, 15 May 2020 02:20:34 GMT

Nice wood... That looks like a sizeable trunk

Kelly Gerrow‌ ... any ideas, this has us stumped

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Fri, 15 May 2020 12:58:15 GMT

this has us stumped

Once I get this figured out, I'll post the link; the pic above is nothin' !

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

OwenGeo — Fri, 15 May 2020 13:29:23 GMT

All -- I'm very sorry you are running into this issue with your uploaded photos. Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this pesky problem as there is no universal way image rotation is stored/read by different systems, but we are looking into it and hope to be able to address this in an upcoming release.

For now, here's a workaround that should help. On a Mac, open one of the images that's giving you trouble in Preview and rotate it 90 degrees four times (using the button shown in the screenshot, below) so that it's back to the expected orientation. Then save the image. That should update the rotation info and cause it to be oriented as you expect after being uploaded to the story. I imagine there is a similar workaround for Windows using the standard image viewer app.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Fri, 15 May 2020 14:09:12 GMT

Thanks for your tip Owen Evans‌ but I'm using a windows 10 machine to author the story map. I actually tried to 'fool' it by rotating it and saving it, but then it just accepts the rotated image and I'm back to square one.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

MiaMassicotte — Fri, 15 May 2020 20:11:25 GMT

I used to have this problem with my iPhone photos, but not with photos I took with my iPad. Apart from EXIF. with iPad my normal camera position has button on the right, so device is *already* in landscape mode, hence my iPad photos dI'd not have this issue. But not when I took a photo in portrait mode with my iPhone (which seems natural as I'm holding the iPhone upright with one hand, button is at the bottom and image fills the whole screen). My fix might be old news to you, but now I hold my iphone in landscape -- as though I'm holding a camera -- with the button on the right; then no exif problem. Otherwise, I do make a copy and rotate to landscape mode to use it for uploading/sharing with the non-Apple universe.

fwiw,

Mia

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Fri, 15 May 2020 20:32:15 GMT

I guess I just don't understand the rotate to landscape idea; I do that and my image is sideways. The story map does that for me. What am I missing here?

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

MiaMassicotte — Fri, 15 May 2020 21:13:25 GMT

I make a duplicate of my original iPhone Xr photos (if taken in portrait mode) and rotate it to landscape while it's still on the iPhone. That's the one I upload. it's pretty easy to tell in the photo selector which is the landscaped image. When taking new photos, I hold my iphone in the 'camera' position so that the button is on the right.

For me, these practices have resolved the frustrating and quirky automatic flipping problems where I couldn't get my photos to behave.

Mia

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

OwenGeo — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:34:30 GMT

I apologize you are having this issue with incorrectly rotating photos. We have identified an issue in how photos are requested and sent to the app. This issue is being worked on by the back-end team and they hope to have it addressed in the next ArcGIS Online release in September.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:23:40 GMT

Thanks Owen- glad to hear it's and issue that can be resolved. If I were to join the early adopter program, would I be able to test it out between now and the anticipated release date?

Owen Evans‌

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

OwenGeo — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:04:11 GMT

Hi Joe, since this is just essentially a bug fix, I'm not sure if/how that would be made available through the EAP.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

OwenGeo — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 04:29:22 GMT

All -- This issue has been addressed in last night's ArcGIS Online update. Images should no longer be incorrectly rotated after the upload completes.

Please let me know if you are still experiencing this issue.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

JoeBorgione — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 14:21:29 GMT

Owen Evans‌ - what version/type of story maps has this been fixed in?

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

OwenGeo — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 14:28:52 GMT

Joe Borgione‌ - As far as we know this issue was only reported in ArcGIS StoryMaps, but the fix was a back-end fix on the ArcGIS Online/API side.

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

CodySanford — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 20:15:24 GMT

Hello, as of Dec. 13th, 2020, I am still experiencing this issue of image rotating when it uploads into the StoryMap. Thank you!

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

DBlake — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:54:32 GMT

I realise this thread is a year old but I'm having the exact same issue with the new 'image gallery' in StoryMaps. I've tried removing exif information and rotating 4 times and resaving but no joy. Is there no fix yet? (obvious thing would be a rotation tool in the image gallery no?)

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

DBlake — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:01:21 GMT

Ok, after posting that I find a workaround in Windows 10. Just rotating in Windows photo app does not work but if you click on edit >crop and rotate and then crop just a tiny bit and save the new orientation seems to finally carry through to StoryMaps. Not ideal but will do for now!

Re: Story Maps Flip Photos from Portrait to Landscape

SarahBlake — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 21:46:03 GMT

I also am experiencing this same problem - My StoryMap (from March 2021), which has portrait and landscape photos, was fine until recently - now 3 of my landscape-oriented pictures are rotated 90 degrees to the right...