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cpopham · 01-12-2009, 08:15 PM

Originally Posted by madbrain

One thing that has annoyed me very much is that many programs that I use are unable to understand the rotation information embedded into the JPEGs by the K200D.

<snip>

Here is hoping that Pentax releases an update to the K200D firmware and stops using the rotation flag, and records the bitmap in the alternate dimension instead. It's more code, but it's more universally supported ...

I'd really rather that the camera makers didn't have to compromise in order to support the lazy software companies who don't want to update their products.

I'm saying this as a professional software developer (not in imaging though)

Rotating the actual image is something we all accept, but in reality it is a poor compromise, as rotating jpegs losslessly requires the file to match certain conditions, and special support in the software. I would say that many people are lowering the quality of their files without knowing this. By contrast, if the orientation flag is used, this can later be changed by software to 'rotate' the image without making any changes to the actual image data at all.

01-12-2009, 08:15 PM	#4
cpopham Loyal Member Location: Auckland Gallery Photos: 0 Posts: 481	Originally Posted by madbrain One thing that has annoyed me very much is that many programs that I use are unable to understand the rotation information embedded into the JPEGs by the K200D. <snip> Here is hoping that Pentax releases an update to the K200D firmware and stops using the rotation flag, and records the bitmap in the alternate dimension instead. It's more code, but it's more universally supported ... I'd really rather that the camera makers didn't have to compromise in order to support the lazy software companies who don't want to update their products. I'm saying this as a professional software developer (not in imaging though) Rotating the actual image is something we all accept, but in reality it is a poor compromise, as rotating jpegs losslessly requires the file to match certain conditions, and special support in the software. I would say that many people are lowering the quality of their files without knowing this. By contrast, if the orientation flag is used, this can later be changed by software to 'rotate' the image without making any changes to the actual image data at all.