Is it possible to change orientation of JPG image without rotating it (and thus losing information)?

Question

As JPG is a lossy compression, every re-encoding losses quality. Thus, 90/180/270 degree rotation is a lossy operation as well. Is it possible to change orientation of JPG photo by changing some of its metadata tags so that the orientation can be changed without re-encoding the photo?

score 20 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 05 '23 at 02:22

20

JPG can be rotated using only EXIF data, so no re-encoding is necessary.

I found this tutorial on the orientation flag - JPEG Rotation and EXIF Orientation

These days, most image apps can handle this flag, many can also write it.

Exiftool is a very comprehensive multi-platform solution that can handle all exif data - see How can I modify the EXIF orientation tag of an image?

edited Apr 05 '23 at 02:22

Nick Westgate

1,851

answered Dec 04 '20 at 12:19

Tetsujin

50,917

Is it possible to change orientation of JPG image without rotating it (and thus losing information)?

1 Answers1