Orientation
0x0112Also: Orientation
How the image should be rotated for display.
Orientation tells viewers how to rotate the photo so it appears upright, based on how you held the camera. Value 1 is normal; 6 and 8 mean rotate 90°.
When an image looks sideways in one app but correct in another, mismatched handling of this tag is usually why.
What the stored number means
Orientation is an enumeration: the file holds a bare integer and the reader looks it up. These are the values, and the wording is the wording the viewer on this site will print.
| Value | Shown as |
|---|---|
| 1 | Horizontal (normal) |
| 2 | Mirror horizontal |
| 3 | Rotate 180 |
| 4 | Mirror vertical |
| 5 | Mirror horizontal and rotate 270 CW |
| 6 | Rotate 90 CW |
| 7 | Mirror horizontal and rotate 90 CW |
| 8 | Rotate 270 CW |
The flag is advisory, and some editors both rotate the pixels and leave the tag in place, so the picture gets turned twice. Values 2, 4, 5 and 7 describe mirrored images, which cameras essentially never produce; seeing one usually means software flipped the file.
Want to see this tag in your own photo? Open the EXIF Viewer and drop an image — every tag is decoded in your browser. To take this tag back out again, remove the EXIF data losslessly.