P: Lightroom sometimes changes orientation inadvertently

Dan,

Should I log another bug for this problem?

The problem is:

1. Lightroom has stored and applied a correction factor based on initial in-camera exif-metadata in NEF.
2. Lightroom then over corrects when re-reading metadata of NEF a second time, after seeing the file/metadata has changed.

Hopefully Adobe will fix this problem, regardless of whose fault it is (at least as an option, in case Nikon software changes something...). Lightroom users want it to work - they/we care less about who is to blame, and more about who takes responsibility for fixing it.

Bottom line: its annoying as heck to edit a raw in NX2 and have it flip in Lightroom.

In my opinion, it shouldn't be illegal or passive-aggressively discouraged for a Lightroom user to edit a raw with NX2...

Rob

I think, but haven't confirmed, that that's a separate bug. I don't know whether it is LR or one of the other involved programs that's at fault, though.

Thanks a lot for announcing the fix, Dan!
Much appreciated!

Good to hear Dan. Does the internal fix also take care of the problem with externally saved raw files (NEFs) causing portrait oriented photos to revert to Landscape?

FWIW, there is a fix for this internally for the next major version. Which is good because this bug has been annoying me for a couple of revs now.

LR 3.5 has lost the orientation data for a subset of my photos again. This bug causes a lot of unnecessary work.

Is the same bug also causing the loss of photo orientations I reported earlier?

I have "similar" problem; Lightroom (every version I can recall) frequently changes the orientation on portait orientation images to landscape and then returns them to portrait. I can see that LR is applying some kind of settings since I see the colors on each thumbnail change as it does so. This greatly slows down performance, since LR then applies all these changes in the background and it typically affects my entire LR catalog of 65,000 images. I have changed OS, hardware, disks, and LR versions over time. The only thing that ever helps for a while is to leave the PC running for a day and let LR go through all the images. But of course the problem comes back after a year or so.

Yeah, I dunno whether NX software changed, or Lightroom, or both, but there is something catty-whompus about orientation handling. Just saving a portrait oriented NEF in an NX program (ViewNX or Capture NX2), even without changing anything, causes orientation to switch to Landscape in Lightroom. I think somebody figured out the details (in another similar thread), but I have not.

I have portrait oriented NEF files produced by a Nikon D700 and once (2 years ago) edited with Nikon ViewNX (ver 1.3, 1.4, 1.5).

Portrait orientation was set by the camera. Editing was basic exposure and white balance correction as well as some IPTC/XMP data was added.

When I import these files into LR 3.4.1, they are display correctly in portrait mode. In LR I set white balance to tungsten and create a new sidecar file (ViewNX did not create one).

Now I drop this file in LR (just from the catalog) and re-import it. Et voilà, now the image is display landscape oriented.

It even happens (being displayed in wrong orientation) when I make a file copy of the NEF/XMP file pair (when it is still present in the LR catalogue) to another folder and import a second time from this folder (unchecked "drop duplicates" in the import dialogue).