How to rotate a picture
- Add your picture. Drop it anywhere on the page, paste it from the clipboard, or click the box to choose a file. JPEG, PNG and WebP always work.
- Turn it. Click 90° left, 90° right or 180°, or use the 30°, 45° and 60° buttons. You can also grab the picture and drag it around, or type an exact angle.
- Flip it if you need to. Flip horizontal mirrors left to right. Flip vertical mirrors top to bottom.
- Download. The result is saved as a new file named after the original with
-rotatedadded. Start over puts the picture back as it was.
The buttons add up. Press 45° right twice and the picture is turned 90°. The line under the preview always shows the current angle and the size of the file you will get.
Quick turns and exact angles
Positive angles turn the picture clockwise and negative angles turn it counter-clockwise. These are the angles people reach for most:
| You want | Click | Or type |
|---|---|---|
| Turn a sideways phone photo upright | 90° left or 90° right | -90 or 90 |
| Fix an upside-down picture | 180° | 180 |
| The same as 270° clockwise | 90° left | -90 (or 270, which becomes -90) |
| A diagonal, like a diamond | 45° left or right | -45 or 45 |
| Level a slightly crooked horizon | Type a small number | for example -1.5 or 2.3 |
The box accepts decimals, so you can fix a tilt of a degree or two. The slider covers -180° to 180°. Any angle you type is wrapped into that range, so 270 shows as -90 and 360 shows as 0.
Drag to rotate
Click and hold anywhere on the preview, then move the pointer around the middle of the picture. The picture follows your pointer like a steering wheel. It nudges itself onto 0°, 90°, 180° and -90° when you get within about 2.5° of them, which makes it easy to land on a straight picture. Hold Shift while dragging to move in 15° steps instead.
If you prefer the keyboard, click the preview once and press the left and right arrow keys. Each press turns the picture 1°, or 15° with Shift held.
Flip horizontal and flip vertical
A flip makes a mirror image. Flip horizontal swaps left and right, the way a mirror does, so a person looking left will look right. Flip vertical swaps top and bottom, as if the picture were reflected in a lake.
The flip buttons always act on what you see on screen, even after you have turned the picture. If you turn it 90° and then press Flip horizontal, the preview mirrors left to right, exactly as you would expect.
A flip mirrors everything, including words, logos and numbers in the picture. Use a flip to correct a mirrored selfie or to reverse a layout, not to fix a picture that is merely sideways. Sideways needs a turn.
Tilted pictures: grow, straighten or keep the size
Turning a rectangle by an angle that is not a multiple of 90° leaves empty triangles at the corners. The first option under More options decides what to do about them. The examples use a 1600 × 1000 picture turned 10°.
| Option | What happens | Result size |
|---|---|---|
| Keep everything (default) | The canvas grows so no part of the picture is cut off. The empty corners are filled. | 1749 × 1263 |
| Crop to straighten | Keeps the largest rectangle with the picture's original shape that fits inside the turned picture. There are no empty corners, but the edges are cut. | 1267 × 792 |
| Keep the original size | The canvas stays 1600 × 1000, so the corners are filled and the edges are cut. | 1600 × 1000 |
To straighten a crooked horizon, type a small angle and choose Crop to straighten. If you first turn a picture by 90° and then fix a small tilt, the crop starts from the turned shape, so a landscape photo that has become a portrait stays a portrait.
A turn of exactly 90°, 180° or 270° never leaves corners, so all three options give the same picture for quarter turns, apart from Keep the original size, which keeps the canvas as it was.
Filling the corners, and picking a file type
Under Fill empty corners with you can choose transparent, white, black or any color. The preview shows a checkerboard wherever the result is see-through. Pictures that started as JPEG begin with a white fill, because JPEG cannot hold transparency. PNG and WebP pictures begin transparent.
Save as offers the same type as the original, PNG, JPEG or WebP. If the original is a type the tool cannot save, such as GIF or BMP, same type saves a PNG. JPEG and WebP show a quality slider, set to 92 by default.
- PNG is lossless and keeps transparency. Files are larger for photographs.
- JPEG makes small files for photographs, with no transparency.
- WebP is usually smaller than both and keeps transparency, but a few older programs cannot open it.
Phone photos that open sideways
Many phones save a photo sideways and add a small note, called the orientation tag, that tells viewers to display it upright. Some programs ignore that note, which is why a picture can look right on your phone and sideways somewhere else.
This tool applies the note when it opens a picture, so the preview matches what a normal viewer shows. If the preview is already upright, you do not need to turn anything. If it is not, turn it and download. The file you save holds the pixels in their final position and carries no orientation tag, so it looks the same everywhere. Our EXIF guide explains the tag, and the metadata viewer shows whether a file has one.
Quality, metadata and limits
- Quarter turns are exact. Turning by 90°, 180° or 270° and flipping move whole pixels, so nothing is blurred. Other angles have to resample the picture and are drawn with smoothing, which softens fine detail very slightly.
- JPEG is saved again. The tool redraws the picture and saves a new file, so a JPEG goes through compression one more time. At the default quality of 92 the loss is hard to see. Programs that rotate a JPEG without re-encoding it exist, and this is not one of them.
- Metadata is not copied. The saved file is a fresh drawing, so camera details and GPS location from the original are not carried over. That is a handy side effect, but if you want to see or remove metadata on purpose, use the metadata viewer or the metadata remover. The guide on removing location from photos explains what is hidden in a picture.
- Very large pictures. Browsers limit how big a picture they can save. If the result would be wider than 16,384 pixels or larger than about 120 million pixels, the tool scales it down just enough and tells you.
- Animated files. For an animated GIF or WebP, only the first frame is used.
- One picture at a time. Press Another picture to start a new one.
- HEIC photos. Most browsers other than Safari cannot open HEIC, so convert the file to JPEG first if the tool says it cannot open it.
Privacy
The picture is opened and turned inside this tab, and the file on your disk is never changed or deleted. For what the site collects, see our privacy policy.
Frequently asked questions
Which way is positive when I type an angle?
Positive angles turn the picture clockwise and negative angles turn it counter-clockwise. Typing 90 does the same as 90° right, and typing -90 does the same as 90° left.
Why did my picture get bigger after I rotated it?
At an angle that is not a multiple of 90°, the turned picture needs a larger canvas to avoid cutting off its corners. The extra area is filled with the color you chose, or left transparent. If you do not want the extra space, open More options and choose Crop to straighten.
Does rotating a picture reduce its quality?
Quarter turns and flips move whole pixels and lose nothing, but a JPEG is compressed again when it is saved, at the quality shown in the options. PNG saves without any loss. Angles in between resample the picture, which softens very fine detail a little.
Can I rotate several pictures at once?
Not yet. This tool works on one picture at a time. When you are done, press Another picture and add the next one.
Will the rotated file still have its location data?
No. The saved picture is redrawn on a canvas, which does not copy the original's metadata, so camera details and GPS location are left behind. Check a file with the metadata viewer if you want to be sure.
Why is there a checkerboard behind my picture?
The checkerboard marks the parts of the result that are transparent, such as empty corners after a tilt. It is only in the preview. Choose a fill color under More options if you would like the corners solid, and note that a JPEG always gets a solid fill because it cannot hold transparency.