As for your point 2, if you consider a REST resource as a collection of fields, you can update it without custom verbs: GET /resources/picture/orientation =>

As for your point 2, if you consider a REST resource as a collection of fields, you can update it without custom verbs: GET /resources/picture/orientation => 0 PUT /resources/picture/orientation?value=90 REST is not so much about a simple API, but a scalable service. Custom verbs break scalability.