Rotate Image Online for Free

How to Rotate an Image

Rotating is almost always the very first edit. Get the orientation wrong and nothing else you do afterward will look right.

Here's the deal — your phone sometimes lies about which way is up. You open a perfectly good photo and it's sideways, or tilted just enough to make your brain itch. Maybe it's a 90° fix (one click, done) or maybe the horizon is off by two degrees and you need the fine-tuning slider. Either way, it shouldn't take more than five seconds.

Worth knowing: rotations at 90°, 180°, and 270° are pixel-perfect. Nothing gets recalculated. But if you go with a weird angle — say, 17° to get artsy — the canvas expands to fit the tilted image, and you'll get transparent corners (those checkerboard areas). Save as PNG to keep them transparent, or JPG to fill them white. Honestly, most people don't even notice.

Common Rotation Angles

90° clockwise swings the top of your image to the right. That's the one you need when your phone saved a portrait shot as landscape. Counter-clockwise does the opposite. And 180°? That's for when something ended up completely upside down — scanned documents are famous for this. All three are lossless, by the way. The pixels just get rearranged like tiles, no interpolation involved.

Custom Angle Rotation

The slider covers -180° to 180° and you can move it in single-degree steps. If the horizon on your sunset photo dips 2° to the left, just nudge the slider until it's level. You can also type in an exact number if you're particular about it. Behind the scenes, non-standard angles use bilinear interpolation so that edges come out smooth rather than staircase-y.

Rotation vs Flipping

People mix these up all the time. Rotation pivots the image around its center point — think of it like spinning a record. Flipping creates a mirror image instead. Horizontal flip swaps left and right; vertical flip swaps top and bottom. A combo that comes up a lot: rotate a selfie 90° to fix the orientation, then flip it horizontally because your front camera mirrored everything.

Rotate Image Use Cases

Image Rotator Features

Frequently Asked Questions

Fix Sideways Photos & EXIF Orientation Problems

The most common reason to rotate a photo is that it shows up sideways. Here's why it happens and how to fix it permanently.

Why Photos Appear Sideways

When you take a photo with your phone, the camera sensor always captures in the same physical orientation. Instead of physically rotating the pixels, your phone records which way was "up" in the EXIF metadata — a small data tag embedded in the file. Smart apps read this tag and display the photo correctly. But email clients, some web browsers, older software, and many printers ignore EXIF entirely and show the raw pixel orientation. Result: your perfectly good photo appears sideways.

The Permanent Fix

The only reliable fix is to physically rotate the pixels so the image looks correct without relying on EXIF. Upload the sideways photo here, click 90° Left or Right, and download. Now the pixels themselves are in the correct orientation and the image displays correctly on every device, in every app, every time. No metadata dependency.

Common Sideways Scenarios

iPhone photos sent via email — some email clients strip or ignore EXIF. Photos uploaded to certain websites or CMS platforms that don't process EXIF. Images embedded in PDFs, Word documents, or presentations where the software reads pixel orientation literally. Drone photos that record at a fixed sensor angle. Images from scanners that default to landscape. All of these are fixed with a quick 90° or 180° rotation here.

Straighten Photos & Use Creative Rotation

Beyond fixing orientation, rotation is a powerful tool for visual composition — both corrective and creative.

Straighten a Crooked Horizon

Your brain detects a crooked horizon instantly — even a 1° tilt feels "off." Common culprits: hand-held shots where you weren't quite level, photos taken on slopes or beaches, and images shot through car windows. The fix is simple: use the custom angle slider to nudge the image 1 to 3 degrees until the horizon is perfectly level. Look for a straight reference line in the image — the ocean, a rooftop, a road — and align it.

Straighten Architecture Photography

Building photos demand straight vertical lines. If you tilted the camera even slightly while looking up at a building, the verticals will converge — a phenomenon called keystoning. While this tool can't fix perspective distortion, it can fix the rotation component. If the building leans 2° to the left, rotate 2° clockwise and the verticals become much straighter. Combined with cropping, this gets you 90% of the way to professional architecture shots.

The Dutch Angle (Creative Tilt)

Tilting a photo 10° to 25° on purpose is a classic cinematic technique called the Dutch angle. It creates tension, energy, and visual interest. Works especially well for: urban street photography, action shots, dramatic portraits, and social media content that needs to stand out. The key is committing — tilt enough that it looks intentional (15°+), not accidental (2-5°).

Rotate for Different Platforms

Different platforms favor different orientations. Instagram feed posts work best square or 4:5 portrait. Instagram Stories and TikTok need 9:16 vertical. YouTube thumbnails are 16:9 landscape. Twitter/X images display best at 16:9 or 2:1. If you shot landscape but need portrait (or vice versa), a 90° rotation plus cropping gets you there without reshooting.

Related Free Tools