Photo rotation help (non-forum related).

[Old Greenhorn]

I am nearly at my wits end, and no, this has nothing to do with photos on the forum. Bear with with and I am hoping there is a guru out there that can help me.
 I am having an open house in my shop in a few weeks and I have a smart TV out there I use to keep me company. I wanted to run a slide show of all my custom build photos on and endless loop through those days. I can copy the photos to a USB drive and play them on the TV BUT they are not rotated properly. When I view these photos on my PC it auto-rotates them so I can't tell which ones are correctly rotated and which are saved as 90° off. I have messed with all the options on the TV I can find, I have messed with all the options on my PC that I can find and I can't get them to display as taken so I can rotate them and save them correctly. I've wasted several hours on this. I don't have all the fancy applications available to me I had when I was working for the man. I just have very basic stuff. 
 Anybody have any ideas how I can make this happen? I am not buying new software just for this, I got no money ort time for that. Just looking for clues that might get me on the right road. 
 Windows autorotates everything, even in the file explorer. It makes me nuts.

[RetiredTech]

My thought would be to try some photo editing software. Gimp is a free open source program you could try. It's a powerful photo editor however, it's not very intuitive. You'll probably need to spend some time learning to use it. If your photos are jpeg I seem to remember it won't open them by just clicking. You have to import them then export the finished product back out. I haven't used it, or Windows for years, but if I needed to do anything with photos that's where I'd head.

[Jeff]

I would run them on the device that does rotate, then feed that to the T.V.  

[doc henderson]

Tom, you do some youtube stuff.  can you make a you tube video of even the still photos then play that on the TV?  At least a format you know.

[fluidpowerpro]

Maybe try rotating your TV.

[SwampDonkey]

It might be due to some photos are taken in landscape view and others taken in portrait view. The software in the TV might only display one orientation.

[SawyerTed]

In Windows Settings under Display or in Action Center you can turn auto rotation off.  Then manually rotate the photos, Save and transfer the file to the TV. 

Don't forget to turn Auto Rotate back on later.  

[RetiredTech]

Go here to get Gimp or install it from the Microsoft Store.
Gimp Downloads for Mac, Windows and Linux

Go here to read about rotating photos in Gimp.
3 ways to rotate images in Gimp

If you're working on a png or jpg use the  File/Export or File/Export as menus to re-save in the same format. You can change the name or file location then click Export on the bottom right. On the next popup you can change the settings or take the defaults and click Export one morw time and your done.

[RetiredTech]

@SawyerTed  Thanks for pointing that out. It's been a long time since I had to support Windows. My suggestion is fairly generic and should work for most operating systems. Yours is probably the quickest and easiest method on Windows.I wouldn't have posted if I had seen yours first.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well thank you all for your considered replies. First yes, these are displaying incorrectly because some are taken in the wrong orientation. The TV puts everything up in landscape mode.
 Ted, I searched all through widows, version 10 and can not find that option. The only thing I find is display orientation option so you can turn your monitor on it's side (good for folks who work with documents). Yes, this used to be in there, I used it years ago, gone now. First thing I checked for yesterday and I searched again this morning based on your suggestions. It ain't there.
 RT, that sounds like a lot of work and time to fix these but if it will work, I might put a rainy day into it. I have maybe 300 photos to fix, how long do you think that might take me? My computer is already old, overloaded and slow. Adding another piece of software is something I try to avoid if I can.
 Jeff and Doc may have stumbled on something. I am going to see if I can connect my tablet to the TV and run the slideshow on the tablet and have it display properly on the TV screen. Barring that I could just do a video slide show (which I have to learn first) and run that, either through youtube or direct. I tried making a slideshow with another application I have, but the TV will not recognize and play it. I do not want to bring my PC out to the shop.

 But you have all given me some actionable ideas to work on, so let's see how it goes today. I am going to check out a holiday show today and not sure how much time I will have. Of course, there is the possibility that no matter how the TV gets the photos it will rotate them anyway unless they are imbedded in another format. I will again spend some more time trying to figure out if there are any other options in that TV that I missed.

[SwampDonkey]

In windows 11 it is a right click on the photo, gives option to rotate left or right.

[Old Greenhorn]

I don't have windows 11, running 10 here still.
 But ya know, for a guy who says his brain doesn't work as well as it used to Jeff is still a lot smarter than me and he nailed it. I have a chromecast unit on that tv and I tried it with my phone and it worked perfectly! Then it took me an hour to find a chromecast app for my tablet that wasn't constantly trying to get me to install tiktok or would even work at all without a subscription. Finally settled in on Google Home, but not totally happy with that. It still does not allow me to cast any ap from the tablet without starting it (Home) first and turning on mirroring. SO I can work more on that but for now it does work and I am grateful for everyone's help.
 Now I have to get my updated photo list on there and move on.

[SwampDonkey]

Windows 10 can cast or run as a media server for video and photos as well. I've cast to my Smart TV and I've played videos served off my laptop to other devices. I don't use Chromecast. My web browser [Brave] can also cast, it's Media Router in there.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I have never seen the casting features in windows 10 and I'm not going there anyway, it doesn't help my issue, but thank you.
 I have it figured out now and working. In fact I got a text from Furby that led me into another idea and I have it working on two tv's in the shop now.  He gave me an idea I will work on further, but I need some special cables and have to order those first. But it's working.
 My "wish I could fix this" issue is that these phone and tablet aps I get all are SO overloaded with ads that make me shut them down and restart multiple times. Looking for something better to run a slideshow than what I have found, but I have it working, so I'll muddle through.
 SO now I have to get another TV bracket and hang that other TV. I run one slideshow from the tablet and the other from my phone. It will be fine for just two days.

[SawyerTed]

SO now I have to get another TV bracket and hang that other TV. I run one slideshow from the tablet and the other from my phone. It will be fine for just two days.

It's getting bigger...like trying to chew your first raw oyster.  

I do hope you have enough visitors to need both!  

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, sometimes I can't let it go when I get and idea and go over the top a bit. I added that second TV really because it's a dumb TV and I have had it in my head for a few months to use it at shows with an inverter, but hit a roadblock with
 the picture orientation and back burnered it.
  I will have the two TV's pointing in opposite directions, I don't need two, but I have them, and I figure I can run a movie when folks aren't here.
 I have to focus on next week's show first though.

[Jack S]

Im wondering if you could use   desktop computer  monitors instead of bulky ol tvs just a thought

[Jeff]

I dont know if this helps, but on an android device, in the gallery, has a slideshow function.

Gallery/Album/start slideshow. Ill go see if it loops.

Nope, stops at a watch again screen. Oh well.

[SwampDonkey]

Casting displays what's on your laptop as a duplicate off it. The photo shows exactly the way it does on the laptop or tablet. It's just a video feed like out of a CD player, no flipping of the image done. If you set up a media server, then the SmartTV will flip it, because your computer is acting like a drive on the network.

I've cast from windows 10 many times to my smartTV. But I'm Windows 11 now and things are little different. 

I was trying to cast to my console machine yesterday, but all that would cast was the desktop screen. It would not show any open apps. Which was weird. And it was bit flaky connecting to the screen because I tried many times to see the connection in the console and it wouldn't come up. I don't think it is fully supported on that hardware because it mentions that in the console's app screen. But media server works 100% from the console. Two different connections there.  In windows 11, Windows Key-K brings up casting.

[Old Greenhorn]

I mentioned a few posts back, but wasn't really specific. I don't want to involve a PC in this setup at all. Originally I wanted to run it at shows and this small dumb LCD TV 17" TV I have that is surplus to my needs. It draws less than an amp at 110v and I could get a small inverter hooked up to the 12v deep cycle battery I have in the trailer. That's when I ran into the rotation problem and tabled it after a couple hors of messing around. Now we are back on it for the shop display, but I am still keeping that original goal in mind.

Jeff, I am using something called 'Gallery' also for the slideshow with a looping feature, but it keeps popping up these ad screens that will not clear until I dump the program and start over. It does work fine if I go right in and start up the slideshow, but if I try to make an adjustment or reset it, I get the ads and have to dump it. There are (apparently) several aps with that same name and I think I tried them all.

I am going to order ordered the cable that Furby suggested and see if I can eliminate the Chromecast device completely.
But just to sum up, I have it working now well enough to get through the open house. I just have to get a tv bracket at HF in the next couple of days to hang the TV.

[Peter Drouin]

Best of luck Old Greenhorn.

[Ianab]

I know GIMP software has been suggested, and although it's another process to learn, it WILL fix the issue. It can do 1000 other Photoshop style things, but it also gets the basic things like rotating / cropping / color balance etc right. 

Open up the bothersome pictures in Gimp, rotate them so they are correct, then export a copy to the thumb drive you are displaying from. 

You can crop and alter color / contrast etc as well, to make them look better on screen, but that's level 2. 

I think the issue is the original JPG format didn't account for landscape / portrait settings, it was just an image file. The setting for that is added to the "extra" info that's tacked on to the file. If the program (or TV) doesn't read that info, then it just shows the image, at whatever orientation. (Often the wrong one) 

So the fix is to massage the files into the correct orientation, then have the basic TV system display them. 

[doc henderson]

Tom, maybe level 3 can make purple look like brown.  

[clearcut]

Irfanview was my go-to for simple image viewing and manipulation when using Windows. It is still supported in Windows 10.

It supports lossless jpg image rotation and is far less complicated than Gimp.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well just to be clear, this issue has been resolved using the suggestions made by Jeff and Doc that led me to a solution by feeding the photos into the tv through the chrome cast device from a tablet. Now I don't know how this is going to work on a 'foreign' WIFI network, I may have to reconfigure it all, but in my shop it works. As for this weekends show, we shall see.
 I did download GIMMP and messed with it, that's when I realized that I have completely misunderstood the problem. The TV is rotating everything to landscape to fit on it's screen the best way. It does not matter how the photo was saved, the tv will rotate it to landscape. So the only solution is to crop every photo to lay out properly in landscape. I have almost 400 photos in this series and I am not gonna do that with all the ones that are 'wrong'. So I am sticking with the solution I have working now.
 However, Furby turned me onto a direct cable connection from the tablet/phone, to the TV that may be a bit better because it eliminates and WIFI usage, which will be good at any show, regardless of WIFI. That cable is on it's way and we'll see if I get it in time for the show

 Either way I am good for this show, it just depends on if I can get my stuff to work through the network at the distillery if I don't get the magic cable in time. I'll get to the show about and hour or more before we open, so I should have time to make it work, if not, I will just abort.
 In the meantime I picked up another TV wall mount today and now have two TV's int he shop for the open house facing opposite directions.