IPhoto Exporting bug ?

Question

Ok lets see if I can explain this I haven't seen this problem before and I have over 10,000 photos in iPhoto, I imported from my cameras memory card 25 images some portrait, and some landscape none of them edited yet so no changes to the original files yet.
Now I decide to upload to my SmugMug account using the SmugMug export plugin, while they were uploading I noticed that the file sizes of the portrait photos were about half the files size of what they should have been. So I decided to do a little trouble shooting to see if it was the plugin or iPhoto where this bug is.
Tests were done on non edited files, and the JPEG Quality was set to MAX (Grayed out while the following first 2 choices were used)
1. So here is what I did, started with iPhoto -->file export -->original, to a folder on the desktop and everything was correct file sizes.
2. iPhoto -->file export -->current and the landscape file sizes were ok but the portrait photos were about half the file size.
3. iPhoto -->file export -->JPEG and JPEG Quality=MAX the landscape files are fine but portrait photos were about half the file size.
So here is the issue, if you edit or make changes to your files and want to export the current photos all your portrait photos will export at about half the normal file size. As for the SmugMug plugin it appears to be using the "current file, or JPEG setting".
Why is iPhoto messing with the file sizes on export when using "current file setting" for portrait when lanscapes are fine?
Message was edited by: Islander
Message was edited by: Islander

Answer 1

My two cents on this issue.
Having recently upgraded to a dSLR, I too ran into the "Orientation" tag issue with rotated photos. As you pointed out, my dSLR acts the same in that the auto rotation ON/OFF menu item in the camera only applies to playback of the photo. The orientation tag is still applied to every photo regardless.
So in my case, I use a (now long in the tooth) application called Cameraid to initially review new photos, rotate them as needed, throw out the bad ones, and then batch rename the bunch according to my renaming rules. The problem is, this program rotated the files great, but does not update the Orientation tag. What then happens is if I then loaded the photo into an application (e.g. Preview, Photo Shop Elements) or to a web site (e.g. Flickr) that recognizes and acts on the Orientation tag, it would slip those photos again so that they would now display 90-degrees from "normal" because I had already rotated them.
I also just recently got my ne iMac, so I am slowly updating my work flow tools. I would like to find something equivalent to Cameraid that can batch rename with the same complete flexibility and also allow me to rotate photos AND update the "Orientation" flag to match. In the meantime, I am using a little command line application that can "fix" the orientation flag for me. I made a little script file that looks at all the new photos in my work folder and "fixes" the Orientation tag so that they are all "Normal" (not rotated) then in Cameraid I rotate the photos like I normally do and everything matches.
So since I started to play around with iPhoto again with my new Mac (I haven't seriously played around with it since iPhoto v2) I didn't notice the problem you describe because my workflow fixes all my rotation and orientation issues before they hit iPhoto. Not an ideal workflow, but it is getting the job done.
Just thought I would share my own observations. I will have to look at my photos when I get home and try your troubleshooting steps with my "fixed" portrait photos and see if I can the same issue as you or if making the Orientation tag for portrait photos be "normal" (zero) if that allows iPhoto to not resize the files on exported photos. When I get a chance to try it, I will report back.
Regards,
Patrick