[Feature]: Image rotation

[Nonobis]

Feature detail

Add a feature for rotation of image

90 (left / right) / 180

Platform

Web

[jrasm91]

I believe there is an exif tag for this. Maybe we can look at adding/using it to implement this feature.

[Chacsam]

That would be a useful feature indeed

[dcrum]

I also think this may be a good feature to add. I suppose i could rotate manually with the stored files with ffmpeg but i dont know if immich would recognize them...

[GingerZero]

I also would find this feature immensely useful.

In my use case it only concerns picture that don't have an orientation tag in the metadata of the file. Some details...:
After having tested Immich with just my Phone's uploads, I was so satisfied that I decided to try and import all my old images since my family's first digital camera.
The older pictures unfortunately did cause some problems. Through the years, the images were stored in many different places and have been added to various programs. As a result, I have multiple issues, chief of which is the image rotation. Some portrait shots aren't rotated properly and a lot of older landscape photos (including digitized photos from the 80s) are inverted, so ground at the top and sky at the bottom of the image. While this would be expected behaviour for Australia, none of my photos are from Australia, so it clearly is a problem as it isn't reflective of reality.

[JasBogans]

I was thinking to use some ml model for image orientation detection (or maybe creating one), like with google photos in the utility section

[jrasm91]

There's already been a lot on this topic. For the immediate future the plan is to leave the original alone and write to a sidecar file instead.

[steve-builds]

I can see the value of not touching the originals at all, so that sounds good to me. Thanks!

[jrasm91]

Yeah and most tools support getting metadata from them as well so it should transfer to whatever tool or software you wanted to move to.

[aisbergde]

Storing in sidecar should be fine, because digiKam (or other software) should be able to detect this. And then these software can optionally write back into the assets, if required.

Does immich only check external libraries for changes, or does it check the default libraries too?

Same question for all changes in General: Is it a good way to change assets in default library outside immich (rotation, geo location, ...) and will immich detect these changes and reimport metadata and recreate thumbnails? Or is immich still on the trip, that no external changes should happen?

[NicholasFlamy]

#10136 is a dedicated feature request for this.

[bo0tzz]

Related: #5151

[steve-builds]

and #3271

[NicholasFlamy]

And #9575

[NicholasFlamy]

And now #11074 is merged.

Potential server implementation: #11658

[OlJohnny]

For anybody looking to work on this topic, there is a PR #9575 which implements this feature, but is looking for someone to continue the work.

This feature is available on mobile since release 1.111 with PR 10989

[bigntallmike]

This has been closed and merged into something else for those finding this now.
Unfortunately this rotation functionality is being delayed because "image editing" is much larger project than "please rotate this 90 degrees." Finding the originals on disk to do this with (for example) geeqie is a pain, and then re-scanning the images in immich so it notices feels very unnecessary.

[MastaBaba]

On mobile, I can indeed rotate an image. But the rotated version does not replace the original. In fact, re-saving the rotated image saves the new image to the phone. In my case, where immich is not how I manage my on-phone library, this does not return the rotated image to the immich library.

[fabb]

And the rotated image has a different date (today) than the original image.

[CarlvO]

Is there any news on this? I know it can be done on the app but it is cumbersome. Being able to do this on the web would be so much easier. I've got literally hundreds of photos scattered around my collection that got imported with the wrong rotation and would like to be able to just go through them manually from the web client and fix them.

[gitaarik]

I just tried it in the App, but when you click "Edit" and then "Crop" and then "Rotate" and then click the checkmark, then you only have the option "Save to gallery", which will create a new photo, which will be ordered as latest. But then the original photo that has the wrong rotation is still in the same spot.

I would like to be able to rotate old photos, and that they stay in the same place in the timeline.

[Qhilm]

Yes, I would like to be able to edit in place (non-destructive, original should be retained on the Immich Server at least) in the Immich App and in the Web App. The original should not be visible anymore in the Immich App and the web app, but I should be able to revert to it with some menu item like "revert to original". "Show original" (without deleting the edits) would also be helpful, ideally with a keyboard shortcut or something like a long press on the image in the Immich App.

Lower priority / maybe not: changes would synchronise back to the native photo apps. Google Photos could do this at some point at least, cropping/rotating and some oher basic changes could sync back to the iOS native photos app. Some changes could not though, like some "enhancement+" (it was not called AI yet at the time I tried this).

[sdylewski]

I'm super interested i this also. I have a lot of old scanned imagers in my library and they're often in the wrong orientation!

[chyron8472]

In Google Photos, when you edit an image in this way, it then asks if you want to save as a copy. I think that, in Immich, if a new image is created, it should inherit the unmodified EXIF data that the original image had.

[Smicky007]

I'm using Immich primarily for a library of thousands of photos I have scanned in, which is a mine field for the wrong picture orientation. Because of the lack of this feature, I have had to delete and reload my image library because it's faster to just do them in Lightroom. Please do this feature!

[Qhilm]

Just as a note, there's a "replace with upload" feature in Immich I believe, no need to delete, that might make it a tad simpler.

I agree we need this, but for me it's dependent on having proper stacking across the board first.

[mareg]

I vote for this feature as well. I just uploaded 10000+ old photos from early 2000s, many of them don't have the orientation tag. It would be enough to simply have "rotate left" or "rotate right", that would save this orientation in the DB and recreated thumbnails accordingly. Nice to have would be if machine learning bit could try to guess, which image has wrong orientation, and "fixed" it on upload or re-scan.

[Denyerec]

Came here to make a similar comment - turning my head this way and that in the thumbnail view and wishing that I could even just correct the thumbnails!

[Qhilm]

Roadmap feature number 4, meaning, 3 other features to go first, but it's planned Soon™:

https://immich.app/roadmap

[bo0tzz]

The roadmap is not strictly ordered. Editing is being worked on at the moment.

[bo0tzz]

Folks, if you have no substance to add please just upvote the main post so you're not notifying everyone who's subscribed to this thread.

[chriscjcj]

Sometimes, when taking a photo, the gravity sensor in the camera isn't oriented correctly so erroneous camera orientation data gets written to the exif tag. Add to that the fact that even in 2025, some image viewing software ignores the exif rotation data and displays the image "as is." All of this sucks very badly. For the last couple decades, I have used GraphicConverter on the Mac to rotate my jpegs. There are two very important components to this procedure. First, the rotation data is cleared from the exif data because it won't be needed. Second, a lossless jpeg rotation takes place. This has no effect on the quality of the jpeg. It does not get decompressed and recompressed. Instead the jpeg's MCUs are rotated and reoriented appropriately. This means that my jpegs will appear correct no matter what, which is lovely. GraphicConverter even allows me to do it to a whole folder full of photos. This means that it reads the exif data, figures out which way it should be rotated, clears the exif data, and then losslessly rotates the images. The ones with bad exif rotation data can be fixed individually.

There is, however, a potential problem with lossless jpeg rotation on jpegs with "odd dimensions." A jpeg is considered to have odd dimensions if it contains a row of incomplete MCUs. You can read all about this phenomenon here: https://www.betterjpeg.com/lossless-rotation.htm. Many Immich users may find the various options of dealing with these jpegs undesirable. However, these days it's unusual to find cameras that produce images with odd dimensions so it's rarely an issue. And perhaps Immich could refuse to losslessly rotate the rare jpeg it finds with odd dimensions. I would love it if Immich had this ability. Perhaps it could be a preference that's disabled by default for safety.

[gotjoshua]

This is an amazingly detailed suggestion.

I think Immich should offer an exception to the principle of don't touch the originals, cuz this is such a common need, and this is such a great nearly fool proof way to do it

[bo0tzz]

This principle isn't just about quality loss or such, it's also about chances of things going wrong; we could have code that never actually does anything that would affect the quality of the image, but if it crashes in dramatic enough fashion it might still mangle the data anyways, leading to the same end result of damaging the original.

[sbopt]

I would request the rotation feature include the ability to "mirror-flip" the image as an option. The reason is I have a lot of scanned negatives that I sometime scan backwards and I only realise when a scene I am familiar with is shown back the front or there is some writing in the image like a street sign.

The preferred interface would be simple as an optional rotation/flip icon below each image so you can rapidly process lots of images as a "point and shoot interface" and then turn off the icons once you are finished.

The preferred implementation would be to give you the option of:

• XML sidecar
• EXIF update
• If some images cannot be rotated/flipped losslessly then default to XMP

[gitaarik]

I think that first part is already done. This discussion is mostly about the second part.

[CarlvO]

Not quite. Yes, you can rotate a pic, but it will be stored locally on your device and then sync-ed back as a new pic with the creation date of today. What i would expect to happen is:

• Select a pic and rotate it
• Immich will make a copy of the picture with some extension to identify it as an edited copy
• The copy will be rotated and rest of EXIF information is maintained in the copy
• the new picture shows up n the library next to the one that was rotated and is linked to the same album(s), gets the same tags etc
• the user can now decide to delete the original picture or maintain it.

[alvtrak]

This is only available in the mobile app (Android at least AFAIK). Are there any plans to have this in the web version?

[gotjoshua]

• the new picture shows up n the library next to the one that was rotated and is linked to the same album(s), gets the same tags etc

the mobile app works, but puts the new image in the timeline NOW (which sucks)

also i think that @CarlvO is inline with the ethos of immich to always be non-destructive,
BUT i think writing exif data to rotate an image (without any further ado)
should be supported (and actually the default behavior).

[AlexSamad]

Just to add - I think image manipulation - but purely rotation for this discussion should be non changing and that just the orientation exif attribute should be used

I have taken this from a google. simply editing the exif data would keep everything in tact and should be a simple job

Most modern digital cameras now have an orientation sensor that detects how the camera was held in relation to the ground. They write a 0, 1, 3, 6, or 8 value to the EXIF metadata tag named "Orientation". It would be very unusual to see values of 2, 4, 5, or 7 against this tag, because they are only used where an image is flipped horizontally (mirror image) and presumably would only be written to the image by software that respects and fully supports all the available Orientation values. I doubt whether a digital camera would flip an image before saving it to the camera's memory, unless it has some cheesey special effects options that might do this.

The common values for the Orientation tag tell supporting software that the camera was held as follows when the photo was taken:
0 = Camera doesn't have an orientation sensor or the feature was disabled
1 = Horizontal/Landscape and upright - normal position.
3 = Horizontal/Landscape but held upside down.
6 = Vertical/Portrait - Turned clockwise by 90 degrees from normal upright position.
8 = Vertical/Portrait - Turned anti-clockwise by 90 degrees from normal upright position.

If ever seen as a value, perhaps after an image editor did some lossless processing and modified the Orientation tag, the following values would have the respective meanings:
2 - Same as 1, but horizontally flipped (ie. on the vertical axis - mirrored).
4 - Same as 3, but horizontally flipped (ie. on the vertical axis - mirrored).
5 - Same as 6, but horizontally flipped (ie. on the vertical axis - mirrored).
7 - Same as 8, but horizontally flipped (ie. on the vertical axis - mirrored).

[alvtrak]

I would to be able to rotate photos and crop them in the immich web version. Be able to create this edited version as a copy or substitute the original photo with this new version.
It is not practical to create this as a new version missing the original metadata of the photo

[mamueHH]

From a technical perspective, we'd need support for reading and writing the tiff:Orientation tag from/to xmp sidecars.
See https://www.exiftool.org/TagNames/XMP.html#tiff for details on this tag, it supports rotation in 90° steps and mirroring.

Example, produced with exiftool -Orientation="Rotate 270 CW" my.xmp:

 <rdf:Description rdf:about=''
  xmlns:tiff='http://ns.adobe.com/tiff/1.0/'>
  <tiff:Orientation>8</tiff:Orientation>
 </rdf:Description>

And then of course some GUI control needs to be added.

[markjamie]

I'm a new Immich adopter and this missing feature is the one thing which is preventing me jumping in with both feet. It is so vital. Please can this be implemented ASAP?

[bo0tzz]

#24155

[sokai]

This IMHO is the solution (for this discussion) 👏

[hexxone]

Ok, so I have a stupid question..

It seems that its now possible to "edit" images in the App. There you can also rotate images...
But apparently then its NOT possible to simply "update" the existing image?
I can only save it in the Gallery as a completely new image?

Is this intended behaviour? Or is this a bug because I am trying to edit a Photo rotation inside of an Album?
Or does it maybe have something to-do with it being a "live-photo" (basically video) or me using an iPhone?

I dont want to re-create the photos... I would rather want to edit every photo in-place.. Especially since saving them as "new" has the following problems: Timestamp is set to "now", Location is lost, Album-assignments are lost and it effectively becomes a duplicate...

Also, can we also get this feature in the Web-UI please?

[Qhilm]

This has been possible for a while. Editing without creating a new image is possible on the web interface and is planned for the app as well.

[mousethatischarles]

Thank you! And thank you for your fantastic application and all the support you're giving. Kind regards, qubeserver.rf.gd/art3/ Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) secure email.

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