Automatically rotate digital images using the right click menu in Windows File Explorer with this program.

Ever had the problem of pictures taken in portrait showing up in landscape in emails, on your blog or on your mobile device? If so, you might have had to manually rotate each image. It's not bad if there are only a few images, but if it's several hundred vacation photos it's a long, tedious job. This small app saves you from manually changing images, it will automatically auto-rotate a single image or all images in a folder and its subfolders.

To use the app, download and install the program. The program adds an entry to the Windows File Explorer right click menu.
To auto-rotate digital images, right click on a folder in Windows Explorer. There are two options in the context menu, Autorotate all JPEGs in folder or Autorotate all JPEG's in folder and in all subfolders. To auto-rotate a single image, select it, right click on the image, and choose Autorotate.

After selecting images, a command prompt window will open. The program checks the image tag, automatically rotates  images and removes the tags. Images will appear as text entries as they are rotated. If an image doesn't have an orientation tag, there will be a Nonfatal Error that says "Unknown orientation tag". When all images are rotated, you'll see a message saying "Rotating finished. Please press any key to close the window". Press any key to close the window and you're done. The folder or image might need to be reloaded for the changes to appear.

The program works by reading the orientation tag that's added by digital cameras, either landscape or portrait. If an image doesn't have an orientation tag it won't be rotated. Another reason images won't be rotated is if you don't have write permissions for the images or the folder. Often write permissions can be changed by right clicking the folder or image and choosing Properties. If the Read-only box is checked, uncheck it, and choose if you want subfolder permissions changed.

The developer is working on a new version (version 3). It's possible it will be a paid app with a pay-what-you-want price structure to fund continued development, but version 2 will always be free.

Take a look at this tool if you work with many digital images, it's a real time saver. The time it  will take to auto-rotate images depends on how many images  are going to be processed. Several hundred images might use quite a bit of system resources and cause some slowing until the process is finished.

JPEG AutoRotate runs on Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000 (32 & 64 bit) and is malware free according to VirusTotal. If you're using Windows 7, check the site FAQ for information if images don't orient correctly, there's an easy fix.

Download JPEG Autorotate
 

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