The ability of a structure to resist degradation depends on its materials and design, but also the maintenance and the surrounding environment. For wooden structures in outdoor environment, such as bridge beams and columns, it is important for safety reasons to be able to determine when they can no longer carry the intended load, and when actions are needed to repair various damages or demolish and build new construction.Glulam beams for outdoor exposure are subjected to cracking. Cracks can have influence on strength and decay since the cracks can be a passage for water and dirt. Glulam beams consist of combining lamella of boards. The quality of the lamellas is taken into account during manufacturing in order to define strength quality of the products. Lamellas will have different annual ring orientation.There are on-going field tests since 2007 of glulam beams and columns made of impregnated Scots pine (Pinus Silvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies), with different dimensions and surface treatment (oil, water based paint system and solvent-based based paint system). The testing grounds are in Bygdsiljum (Lat. 64°20’57”N, Long. 20°30’14”E) and Borås (Lat 57°43’N, Long 12°56’O.) in Sweden. For this investigation 20 “big beams” 140 mm x 450 mm 9 meters long and 45 “small beams” 140 mm x 315 mm were used. Also some “small beams” with widths 90 mm and 215 mm were included. Documentation at the start included dimensions of beams and columns, visual inspection, measurement of moisture content, measurement of dry paint-film thickness, CT scannning (Siemens SOMATOM AR.T) through the cross-section and scanning image of the surfaces. Cracks have been measured every summer. The beam’s surfaces were photographed for further image processing as alternative to manual crack measurements.Data from photos have been extracted with image processing to be analysed. Characteristics such as angle at which annual rings come out to the surface, width of annual rings, lamella position in the beam, and combination of lamellas in finger jointing and resulting propagation of cracks are going to be examined. The goal the fullscale test was to investigate the influence of annual rings orientation on cracking of glulam beams and give recommendations for the industry how to control cracking by considering annual rings orientation in beam lay-ups. So far it seems that there is a difference in surface cracks affected by annual ring orientation.