Nondestructive and Universal JPEG Rotation Possible?
In short, I'd like to use FRV to rotate standalone JPEGs (without an associated RAW file) and see that rotation show up in most other software, including Apple's.
Is that technically possible?
To expand:
I understand FRV prefers sidecar XMP, in part for data integrity, and I do as well for the most part. Most other software seems less advanced; either recognizing only EXIF even if sidecars are present, or maybe recognizing no tags at all?
I see the IPD0 tag is untouched by FRV regardless of my settings; is this tag more universal?
If such a "universal" tag exists, then it would be fantastic to have an option or process to apply rotation to this embedded tag, but leave all other metadata for the sidecar only.
Even better, an option to apply this embedded tag through a "safe" temporary duplicate would be awesome!
The main benefit for me is the immediate "finalization" of the images; wherein FRV can be used, alone, to sort, select, and correct rotation for JPEGs that are then immediately ready for sharing.
Final notes:
I realize this may be part of the plans with the new JPEG XMP reader; if so, great! FWIW the changes from FRV look the same as before, to me, but I'll be excited. Or this may be impossible and I've missed something in my reading. Perhaps I cannot have my nondestructive JPEG rotation and eat it to, and this is akin to encoding gamma in h.264? I'd love to hear why, if that's the case.
Thank ya!
LibRaw
Sun, 05/17/2026 - 21:00
Permalink
Dear Sir:
Dear Sir:
In case of JPEGs, you can embed XMP block with a new orientation tag right into a JPEG. After that different viewers will behave differently, depending on whether they respect embedded XMP or not.
On embedding XMP blocks: please see p. 54 of FastRawViewer manual, 'XMP sidecars and embedded XMP blocks'; and pp. 168,169 for the settings that control this. FastRawViewer manual is available via FastRawViewer's main Menu -> Help -> PDF Manual. The manual is a standard PDF file, it has a table of contents, and is searchable; or you can access it online
https://updates.fastrawviewer.com/data/FastRawViewer2-Manual-ENG.pdf#pag...
https://updates.fastrawviewer.com/data/FastRawViewer2-Manual-ENG.pdf#pag...
Please e-mail support@fastrawviewer.com with any follow-up questions.
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