Windows Photo Viewer or Live Photo Gallery does not honor the EXIF orientation info in an image file

Hi,

By default, JPEG and TIFF picture files that include the EXIF picture orientation property are rotated during import in Windows photo viewer
in Windows 7.

In Windows Live photo gallery you can set the option by following these steps:
1. Open Windows Live photo gallery.
2. Click on file and then click on Options.
3. Click on Import.
4. Now click on “Rotate Photos during Import”.

Some photo applications will display a photo as rotated which is referred to as soft rotating by reading metadata on the photo itself. Although the
Photo Gallery rotates photos on import using this same metadata, many a times it doesn't also rotate all un-rotated photos in their collection for them automatically, or at least display the photos as rotated like some other applications do.

The reason that the Photo Gallery rotates on import, but not after that is because there are a number of applications that don't correctly update the
photo metadata after rotating. This metadata is supposed to reflect the state of the photo, but if the photo is rotated without updating this metadata,
another application using this metadata to determine whether or not to rotate it will incorrectly rotate the photo.

During import, the photos are coming directly from the camera, at which point the integrity of this metadata is not in question. So although it's safe
for the Photo Gallery to rely on this metadata to make an accurate rotate decision during import, as soon as the photo makes its way to the PC, any
other application could interact with the photo, and potentially corrupt this metadata. Therefore, the Photo Gallery doesn't soft rotate at this point.

Regards,
Afzal Taher-Microsoft Support.
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