Photos display sideways

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

I don’t know if it was a bug with an iOS beta version but every time I took a photo with my iPhone X Max within Tap Forms, it would save it sideways. Is there a way to change orientation within Tap Forms or do I have to export to Photos and edit there? Please see attached. Thanks.

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[Brendan]

Are you using the latest beta version of Tap Forms for iOS?

There’s no function for changing orientation in Tap Forms.

Do you have the image size set to Original for your Photo field? If it is, try setting it to Large and see if that solves the problem.

Something changed in iOS 13 that caused this issue. I thought I worked around it. It only affected portrait oriented photos.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

Thanks Brendan for the quick reply. I think the speed of customer support at Tap Forms is great!

Sorry, I should have pointed out that the issue has indeed been resolved with the newest update. It happened while I was on a beta of iOS 13 and the regular Tap Forms version at the time.

The photo size is set at original and Thumbnail Size to largest. If I change Photo Size to Large, will that affect all the photos in the database, or only the ones I take from now on? And will it shrink the size of the database, which currently is a whopping 25GB! I have 2,583 records with about 2-3 photos taken from within Tap Forms on an iPhone 11 Pro Max (and of course previous iPhones too). If that indeed helps to shrink the size of the database, would it also make the database less sluggish?

Please advise.

Thanks,

Lorenz

[Brendan]

The size and number of photos can have an impact on the performance of the database. Especially if you’re using a custom layout as Tap Forms loads the full size image into memory and it just gets displayed in the box you’ve assigned to it and scales it in real time. Smaller images will improve that.

You can use the Resize All Photos function on your Photo field in the Mac version to scale all the photos in that field. Initially the database size will increase, but then go to the Maintenance screen in the Preferences window and click Compact Database. That’ll shrink the size of the database. Close and re-open the document after and you’ll see the true new size of the database.

If you don’t use the Resize All Photos button in the Mac version, changing the Photo Size option will only change it for new photos added from then on.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

So is it reasonable to have a database size of 26GB for 2,600 records with 2-3 photos at full resolution? It seems still awfully large to me. Or do large pick lists with 100 values have a detrimental effect? I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max and I hate that it stutters scrolling through the list view.

[Brendan]

Pick Lists take hardly any space. It’s the photos that are making your database so huge.

[Sam Moffatt]

Doing some math:

26GB is 26624 MB.
2600 records with 3 images each is 7800 images.

That’s around 3.4MB an image. I think that’s on par for what an image shot on that camera should be at with the full resolution. You also need to add in some space taken up for what ever content you have in your record.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

That makes sense then. I will definitely have to reduce the size of all photos in order to have a manageable database.

Perhaps related: I constantly use the search field in the list view, frequently and quickly. About every 3 times I search the app crashes. So frustrating! I virtually type the name and right before I want to click the search button, the app quits. I launch again, and it’s good for another 2-3 searches.

Because I had this problem with syncing I didn’t compact the database yet, although perhaps it could help? Because I was hoping without compacting I could potentially recover contacts? What should I do? Thanks.

[Brendan]

If you compact the database, it does purge old revisions of records from the SQLite file. Did you try the Recover Deleted Items function to recover your contacts?

And if you’re going to sync a 25 GB file, I would never use iCloud for that. It’ll take forever and may not complete. Your best bet is to use Apache CouchDB for that.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

I did on the Mac, but it didn’t find anything. Is there a Recover Deleted Items function on the iPhone?

Yes, iCloud didn’t work for this I waited days and days but it wasn’t complete.

[Brendan]

No, that function is on macOS only.

You could send the document over to the Mac version from the iPhone version. Then try it on that field on Mac.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

Well, I would love to send the document to the Mac but when I click on airdrop it fails and message AirDrop from iPhone was canceled appears. I start to feel that my database is completely corrupted and becoming useless. With the constant crashing while searching, not being able to send it to the Mac, what can I do? Is there a way to send you a generated bug report or anything else I could send you to analyze? I am at my wit’s end. Thanks.

[Brendan]

You can also use iTunes File Sharing (or the Finder in Catalina) to copy your document from your iPhone to your Mac. Maybe your Mac is too old or doesn’t support AirDrop from the iPhone?

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

My iMac could indeed be too old (2013) although it runs the newest version of Catalina. Other air drops work, just not this one. But it could be because the file is too large?

Regarding the crashing, the new iPhone update yesterday (13.2.3) seems to have improved things dramatically! So far it didn’t crash once, whereas before after every 2-3 search terms!

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

Sadly, it still crashes now. Is there anything that I can send you so that you can see what’s wrong with the database and if it can be fixed. Thanks.

[Brendan]

You could email me a backup of the database so I can try to make it crash here.

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

OK, I have good news to report. I airdropped the database from my iPhone to my Macbook Air with an older OS (for some reason it didn’t work to my iMac with Catalina), and it worked. I restored 26 contacts that were deleted because of a botched sync. Although their photos were missing, I could bring them in from a backup. I then compacted the database, which shaved off 2GB, from 26GB. Then I reduced the size of all pictures from original to 1500×1500, compacted the database again, and lo and behold what was 26GB is now 4GB. I deleted the app on the iPhone, reinstalled it, sent the database from the Macbook and now I have a well-working database that is much faster and smooth, and so far hasn’t crashed once! I put in considerable effort over the last days, but I think I am happy now with a clean database. Thanks for creating such a superb product – it’s my number one app and I use it a good 7 hours a day!

[Lorenz Ehrsam]

I have set my photo size to Medium 1500×1500 pixels. I thought every photo I take from within Tap Forms would save it to that size. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Just checked and the new photos taken save at original (4,000×4,000). What am I doing wrong?

[Brendan]

Hi Lorenz,

Yes, that should be the case. Setting the Photo Size property doesn’t affect existing photos, but it should affect new photos taken with the camera or selected from the Photo Library. I’ll have a look into this to see if I broke something in my attempts to fix the rotation issue. I do have some photo samples from a customer that exhibits the rotation problem still. So I will be working on digging into that issue again soon.

Thanks,

Brendan

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