Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Emailing Pictures from iPhone

Faruk and I were chatting about iPhone’s EXIF rotation flag, and various ways of getting pictures onto Tumblr. He mentioned that he never has a problem when using the Tumblr iPhone app (which I stopped using because it keeps getting corrupted and I have to delete it and then reinstall it).

Plus, email just seems so easy for doing this.

I have seen it occasionally rotate pictures that I didn’t want rotated, or not rotate pictures that I do want rotated.

I cannot figure out the why or how it works or doesn’t.

I posted (and then deleted, sorry for briefly flooding your dashboard) several pictures to Tumblr:

1. A horizontal picture sent via the Photo app’s “Email Photo” option

2. A vertical picture sent via the Photo app’s “Email Photo” option

3. A horizontal picture sent by copying the picture and then pasting it into an email

4. A vertical picture sent by copying the picture and then pasting it into an email

5. A vertical screenshot posted by Photo app’s “Email Photo” option

6. A vertical screenshot posted by copying the picture and then pasting it into an email

Of these, only #3 failed to properly display when viewed in a web browser.

Now I know that I have had screenshots which were displayed incorrectly, so there is still some mystery here as to why it doesn’t always happen.

That said, I conducted this test primarily to test one specific option: posting a picture to Tumblr by sending a mail to my Posterous account.

So I sent #3 to my Posterous, using the copy/paste method, and it worked. It was properly rotated when it appeared on my Tumblr.

Therefore, I now plan to email pictures to Tumblr in the future by way of Posterous.

Why copy/paste a picture into an email instead of just using the Photo app’s “Email Photo” option?

Simple: iPhone automatically (and without any option to disable) downsizes pictures sent that way, but does not downsize them if you copy/paste it into an email.

(This also gives me a good way to get good pictures onto my Flickr too, as I can email Posterous and tell it to post it to Flickr and Tumblr.)

Blogged for the benefit of anyone else who might want to do the same thing in the future. Hopefully this will fix the iPhone Rotation Issues that I’ve been having.