Manual:$wgEnableAutoRotation

Images: $wgEnableAutoRotation
Whether to enable image auto-rotation based on EXIF information
Introduced in version:	1.18.0 (r99910)
Removed in version:	Still in use
Allowed values:	(boolean)
Default value:	true if the image rasterizer supports rotation, false otherwise
Other settings: Alphabetical | By function

Usage

To explicitly disable image auto-rotation, add to the bottom of LocalSettings.php:

$wgEnableAutoRotation = false;

Explicitly setting to true is probably a bad idea (since if the image renderer supports rotation, it should be auto-detected).

Details

If it is true, MediaWiki will look at the EXIF Orientation metadata field (which is set mainly by smartphones and some cameras, when pictures are taken sideways) and automatically rotate the image to the correct orientation.

If not set in LocalSettings.php (or if set to null) then this setting takes its value from BitmapHandler::canRotate() method - which returns true if the image rendering method supports rotation.

Warning:

After changing this setting, if you have images that appear squished (width and height are reversed) you may have to run the maintenance script: php refreshImageMetadata.php --force --quiet

You can use ?action=purge on image pages to update scaled images (thumbnails, etc) after changing this.