Photo Orientation in Family Historian 7
Some Image Files, such as digital camera JPEG photos, include Exif Orientation to say they should be displayed Landscape, Portrait, Inverted, etc.
ƒh7 attempts to honour this Exif information when creating MediaWhen you add a picture, video, sound recording, document file etc into a Family Historian project, a Media record is created to represent that media item within the project; the Media record includes a link to the actual Media file. Records, so that photographs are correctly rotated if the necessary information is available.
To quote from the Help on this:
Phone cameras and digital cameras often record the orientation of the phone or camera when the photo was taken, in ‘EXIF’ metadata embedded within the image file. If Auto-rotate Images is enabled, Family Historian will use this EXIF metadata, if it exists, to ensure that images are rotated correctly.
You can disable this using Tools > Preferences, selecting the General tab and then Advanced and unticking Auto-rotate Images.
If you look at these pictures in an ordinary picture viewer, how are they aligned? If they are aligned the same way that they are aligned in ƒh7 when auto-rotation is enabled, that would suggest there is an error in the alignment information in the pictures themselves (it is as if the pictures are saying: rotate this image 90 deg to be the right way up, when that in factFacts are one of the key concepts at the heart of Family Historian; they are how you record the things that happened to, or described, each ancestor (Individual). is wrong). If that is the case, I would suggest that you rotate them until they’re the right way up, using any external picture tool (that should correct any internally stored wrong information), and then re-enable the rotate image option in FH and close and restart FH. I would expect that if you do, you’re likely to have fewer problems with picture rotation issues in the future.
Photo Orientation in Family Historian 6 and below
Some Image Files, such as digital camera JPEG photos, include Exif Orientation to say they should be displayed Landscape, Portrait, Inverted, etc.
Unfortunately, in [fH6[ and below, this Orientation is sometimes ignored, so photos may be incorrectly rotated. The best solution is to use an image editor to rotate the image to its desired orientation and reset the Orientation to its top-left value, which is consistent with being ignored.
Many Windows versions have Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Live Photo Gallery that with the image open allows right-click Rotate left/right, or in File Explorer right-click the file and choose Rotate counter/clockwise.
Alternatively, one popular and free image editor is Irfanview with all its PluginsPlugins are small programs that allow new features to be added without upgrading Family Historian itself; some plugins are written by Calico Pie and others are written by users., and after installation this is what to do:
- In IrfanView Open the image file to be orientated.
- Use Options > JPG Lossless Rotation… (Plugin) ~ which avoids degrading the image.
- Choose a Transformation, review the other options, then click Start to rotate image and reset Orientation in the original file.
- If the associated thumbnail image is incorrectly orientated then: Use Options > JPG Lossless Rotation… (Plugin) again. Set Transformation to None, tick Rebuild EXIF thumbnail, then click Start.
- Use File > Exit to close IrfanView.
A bulk file conversion utility recommended by some users is JPEG Autorotate that is a packaged version of the Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool jhead and performs lossless rotation of all JPEG files in a folder.
Moiré Pattern
This occurs when a low definition picture, e.g. from a newspaper or a book, has been scanned with too high a resolution. The effect is interference patterns which look like dark bands across the picture.
This can be corrected by selecting “descreen” as an option when scanning. Otherwise, it is very hard to correct and the best option is to request a rescan at a lower resolution. If the effect is not too bad, using an image editing software to blur the photo may help.
