Secure server conversion
Rotate Image
Turn a photo the right way up. Rotate in quarter turns, flip it if it is mirrored, and download the corrected file. The preview updates instantly, and the finished file is made when you apply it.
Drag & drop your image here
Up to 20 MB per file
Step by step
How to rotate an image in 4 steps
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Add your image
Drag it in or click to browse.
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Rotate left or right
Rotate left or right until it looks correct. Each press is a quarter turn, and the preview updates immediately.
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Flip it if needed
Flip it if needed — useful for scans and selfies, which are often mirrored.
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Apply and download
The rotation is written into the pixels, so the image will look correct in every program.
Good to know
Rotation, orientation and EXIF
Most "my photo is sideways" problems are not what they appear to be, and understanding why saves a lot of confusion.
When you take a photo, your phone or camera does not usually turn the image. It stores the pixels exactly as the sensor captured them and writes a small note in the file — the EXIF orientation flag — saying "this should be displayed rotated 90° clockwise".
The trouble is that honouring that flag is optional, and software disagrees:
- Phone galleries, modern browsers and most photo apps read the flag and display the photo correctly.
- Older desktop software, some upload forms, many print services and a good deal of server-side code ignore it entirely.
So the same file looks upright on your phone and sideways once uploaded — the pixels never changed, only whether the reader paid attention to the note.
This tool fixes it properly. The rotation is applied to the actual pixels and the orientation flag is not carried over, so there is no note left for anything to ignore. The result looks the same everywhere.
That is also why a photo can appear to rotate "on its own" when you open it here: the preview honours the flag, showing you what the picture is meant to look like, and any rotation you add is applied on top of that.
Quality
Does this reduce quality?
Rotating in quarter turns is geometrically lossless — every pixel moves to a new position, but no pixel is invented, blended or thrown away. A 90°, 180° or 270° turn rearranges the image exactly.
There is one caveat worth being straight about: the file is re-encoded. For a PNG or WebP that costs nothing, because both can store the result losslessly. For a JPG, saving means a fresh round of JPEG compression, and although this tool uses a high quality setting, a small amount of detail is lost — as it would be with any tool that re-saves a JPG.
In practice this is invisible for a single rotation. It only becomes noticeable if you rotate, save, rotate again, save again, several times over. If you expect to make repeated edits, work in PNG and convert to JPG at the end.
The output keeps the format you started with: a PNG stays a PNG, so transparency survives. If you also want a different format afterwards, use one of the converters on the result.
Common reasons an image needs rotating
- Phone photos that upload sideways. The classic EXIF case described above — it looks fine on your phone and wrong everywhere else.
- Scanned documents and photographs, which come out of a scanner in whatever orientation the page was laid down.
- Screenshots from a rotated tablet or an external display.
- Photos taken over your shoulder, or with the camera held at an angle the automatic detection got wrong.
- Images for print, where the service does not read orientation flags and prints exactly the pixels it is given.
Rotating versus straightening
This tool rotates in quarter turns, which is what fixes an image that is on its side or upside down. It does not straighten a photo that is a few degrees off level — a slightly tilted horizon, for example.
That is a deliberate distinction, not a limitation. Free rotation by a small angle has to resample every pixel, which softens the whole image, and it leaves empty wedges at the corners that must be cropped away or filled in. Quarter turns avoid both problems entirely, which is why they are the operation worth offering as a clean, lossless fix.
Rotating a batch
This tool works on one image at a time, because rotation is a judgement call — you look at the picture and decide. If you have a folder of photos that are all wrong in the same way, the underlying cause is usually the orientation flag rather than the pixels, and the metadata tool may be a better fit.
What happens to the metadata
Camera metadata, including GPS coordinates recording where the photo was taken, is not carried into the output. For a rotation tool this is deliberate on two counts: it protects your location if you are about to publish the image, and it removes the orientation flag that caused the problem in the first place. Leaving the flag in place after rotating the pixels would make some software rotate the image a second time.
Privacy
What happens to your file
This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:
- Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
- Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
- The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
- Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
- The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
- Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.
Questions & answers
Rotate Image: frequently asked questions
Why does my photo look upright on my phone but sideways when I upload it?
Because the pixels are sideways and the file carries an EXIF flag saying "display this rotated". Your phone honours the flag; a lot of upload forms and desktop software ignore it. This tool applies the rotation to the pixels themselves and drops the flag, so the image looks correct everywhere.
Does rotating reduce the image quality?
The rotation itself is lossless — quarter turns just rearrange pixels. The file does have to be re-saved, though, so a JPG goes through one more round of compression. It is invisible for a single rotation; if you plan several edits, work in PNG and convert at the end.
Can I rotate by a few degrees to straighten a crooked horizon?
Not here — this tool does quarter turns only. Free rotation by a small angle has to resample every pixel, which softens the whole image, and leaves empty wedges at the corners that need cropping or filling. Quarter turns avoid both, which is why they are offered as a clean fix.
Will my PNG keep its transparent background?
Yes. The output keeps the format you started with, so a PNG stays a PNG and its alpha channel is preserved exactly. The same is true of WebP.
Is my GPS location removed?
Yes. EXIF metadata, including GPS coordinates, is not carried into the output. That protects your location if you are publishing the photo, and it also removes the orientation flag that caused the problem — leaving it in place would make some software rotate the image a second time.
Can I rotate several images at once?
This tool handles one image at a time, because rotation is a judgement you make by looking at the picture. If a whole folder is wrong in the same way, the cause is usually the orientation flag rather than the pixels.
Keep going
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