GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 588286
eye of gnome silently saves rotated images causing data loss
Last modified: 2010-05-01 21:03:34 UTC
Please describe the problem: viewing images on a memory device in a card reader automatically saves rotated images without warning. In the case of jpeg images this will result in irrecoverable data loss since it is a lossy format. The original data is overwritten without warning. This is totally wrong behaviour for a program that presents itself as an IMAGE VIEWER. It was supposedly the VIEW that I rotated. Nowhere was this announced as an image editing tool. No way , in selecting to VIEW the next image, did I ask or authorise modification of the file I was VIEWING or ask it to overwrite the existing data. The file is now unusable in the camera. If I try to view it I get "read input error" from the camera. This is totally unacceptable from a file "viewer". Steps to reproduce: 1. Insert a memory card (or other external memory device) 2. View an image and rotate as needed to view in correct orientation 3. Move to view next or previous image. 4. umount device and reinsert in camera 5. image now unreadable with the camera Actual results: The rotated image gets SAVED over the original file without any warning or choice. The NEW image is now unreadable by the digital camera that owns the device since it is no longer in the acceptable format. The file is jpeg so the act of saving it means degradation of the image and origninal data is irrecoverably lost. Also the camera cannot handle to modified format. Expected results: I am supposed to be viewing the images on this device. So rotating should rotate the view, no more. Possibly for convenience it could remember the state of the image and automatically re-rotate if I come back to the same image in this session. If I select to move to the next image it should do exactly that, no more. Does this happen every time? yes Other information: Congratulations. You have successfully cloned buggy, broken Vista behaviour. Ironically it was exactly this happening on Vista drove me to install Linux in the first place. Linux was never intended to be a free Vista clone , please stop trying to make it one. I don't have acces to exact version numbers since I wiped this crippled installation in disgust. eog version is that installed with ubuntu 9.04
Strange, this should not happen. We haven't implemented any automatic saving of images. No on-disk image data is harmed until you explicitly press "Save" or Ctrl+S. See bug 338138 for the request of exactly the behavior you experienced. Are you sure it was eog and not accidentally another tool (don't know what Ubuntu installs as photo management app by default)?
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!