Change Orientation of NEF Files in EXIF Data
Use exiftool on the command line to edit EXIF data of NEF files to control their orientation.
$ exiftool -orientation#=1 [myfile.NEF]
| 1 | Horizontal (normal) |
| 2 | Mirror horizontal |
| 3 | Rotate 180 |
| 4 | Mirror vertical |
| 5 | Mirror horizontal and rotate 270 CW |
| 6 | Rotate 90 CW |
| 7 | Mirror horizontal and rotate 90 CW |
| 8 | Rotate 270 CW |
The orientation is relative to the files original orientation, so for example applying a 90 CW rotation 3 times will leave the file rotated 90 degrees, not 270 degrees.
An alternate method:
$ exiftool -orientation="Rotate 90 CW" myfile.NEF
orientation values:
Rotate 90 CW
Rotate 180 CW
Rotate 270 CW
Note that sips can also be used to rotate images.
sips -r 90 path/to/file.jpg --out rotatedfile.jpg