This is a problem that is not about web design particularly, but one you might eventually run into if you are sending out email newsletters - particularly if in your newsletter you are including a photo that was taken on an iPhone, iPad or iTouch.

Now I am an iPhone owner and a big supporter of that line of products. But this is a bug that, from the research I have been doing, has persisted through many versions of the iPhone and its operating systems. I am currently using an iPhone 4, with iOS5. I have not tested this bug out on all devices and platforms, and so am not sure how the images in question would show on a Mac computer or on other mobile devices, like android or blackberry powered phones and tablets.

When one of these i-devices takes a photo, there is metadata attached to the image that indicates what its orientation is (portrait or landscape). Now, apparently this metadata is read and used by those other i-devices, but it won't be read or used by a PC (windows based computer). The problem comes in when you take a photo on your i-device in portrait orientation (i.e. holding the phone so the camera is up top and home button at the bottom) and then email that image to someone else.

A woman I spoke to recently had it happen like this:  A friend took an image in portrait orientation on her iPod Touch and sent it to this other woman.  When the image was received in her email, viewed in an email program on her Windows-based PC, the image was displayed on its side.  So she promptly used the built-in function in Windows Explorer to just flip it right side up.  Then she proceeded to use the image in a Constant Contact email newsletter.

Problem is that when the newsletter went out to her friends, the people viewed the image on a windows computer saw the image in the newsletter alright, but those viewing it on their iPads or iPhones had the image displaying sideways.  Huh?

Let me explain a little further:

If you hold your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch in portrait orientation and take a pic. Then send it via email to two friends - Jane who will look at the email on a PC, and Tom who will look at the email on an iPad - Jane will see the pic sideways and Tom will see it correctly.

But let's say Jane decides to "fix" this problem, by manually changing the orientation in windows explorer so it's right side up, and then re-sends it to some friends of hers. Now the situation is reversed, and the friends with the iPads will see it sideways and the friends with the PCs will see it right side up (which is what happened in this case).

Apparently this is only an issue when taking the image in portrait orientation. It is NOT an issue if you hold the phone sideways (landscape orientation) to take a pic. Of course if you want to use a portrait shot, you can afterwards just copy the image and paste it into a new image file in an image program and save a new image file and you can bypass all that (but that's kind of a pain).

The simpler solution would be to use an app like Snapbot or Rotate Mailer and to make sure that any portrait orientation shots you take are emailed via that app, and the image will arrive on the other end alright.

Chris