Autorotate?

[Victor Engel]

I just selected a bunch of pictures that I don't recall having edited in Lightroom and changed the aspect ratio to 2:1 on them. After changing the aspect ratio, all the pictures are straight. Did I just forget that I straightened them, or dos LR somehow know how to straighten pictures automatically?

[Victor Engel]

Well, this is embarrassing. I obviously processed the files before in Lightroom (or at least something that makes adjustment files that LR can read), because not only was rotation right, so were adjustments to exposure, etc.

This batch of files was taken in 2003 with my 10D. I didn't think I'd touched any of my 10D files with LR. Maybe I'm short on sleep or something.

[Costas]

If you processed those images in ACR (ie Bridge) and saved the changes in .xmp files, then Lightroom reads that information and applies it. Might be what happened

[Victor Engel]

Thanks. That's likely what happened. I thought I was losing my mind.

[Hans Kruse]

Thanks. That's likely what happened. I thought I was losing my mind.

If you did adjust your pictures in ACR this is clearly what happened. In fact turning xmp write on in the catalog settings is the ultimate backup solution if you loose you Lightroom catalog. Not very likely, but still nice to know. Of course the xmp files are only for RAW files and only for the edit on the RAW file and not for virtual copies. Any collections etc. is also not saved in xmp files for good reasons.

[Victor Engel]

It so happens that the computer I use Lightroom on is a different computer from the one I previously worked these files on. For efficiency, I copied the files to a local disk rather than having to work over the network. So I took a look at the directory on the other computer. There are, indeed, .xmp files dated 2008 there.