Rotate or straighten an image
Quarter-turn buttons for sideways photos, plus a free-angle slider for straightening a tilted horizon.
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing is uploaded
- No sign-up
- Batch up to 20 images
Drag & drop your image here
or tap to browse · you can also paste from the clipboard
JPG · PNG · WebP · GIF · BMP · AVIF · SVG · up to 50 MB each · up to 20 files
Choose imagesBefore
After
Processed image will appear here.
How to use the image rotator
To rotate an image, upload it and press the 90° left or 90° right button, or drag the slider for a precise angle. Right-angle rotations are mathematically exact and lose no quality. Free angles resample the image and expand the canvas to fit the rotated corners.
- Load the photoDrop it in. EXIF orientation from phone cameras is already applied.
- RotateTap 90° left/right or 180°, or drag the slider for a precise angle between −180° and 180°.
- SaveDownload the rotated image in your chosen format.
About this tool
Right-angle rotations are exact: the pixel grid is simply re-mapped, so nothing is interpolated and nothing softens. Free angles are different. The pixels no longer line up with the grid, so the image is resampled and the canvas grows to fit the rotated corners.
For free angles the exposed corners are filled with the background colour you choose. Rotate first, then crop back to a clean rectangle if you want to hide the filled corners entirely.
What you get
- Lossless-geometry 90° / 180° / 270° turns
- Free-angle slider with 1° precision
- Background colour fill for exposed corners
- EXIF orientation handled before rotation
- Format and quality control on export
When to use the image rotator
Fixing sideways phone photos
Cameras often record the image in one orientation plus an EXIF flag telling viewers to rotate it. Apps that ignore the flag show it sideways. Rotating here writes real rotated pixels, so it looks right everywhere.
Straightening a tilted horizon
A sea or building line that is two degrees off is instantly noticeable. Nudge the slider by 1° at a time, then crop back to a clean rectangle.
Correcting scans and photographed documents
Pages fed in at an angle scan crooked. A small counter-rotation makes text lines horizontal, which also improves OCR accuracy.
Changing between portrait and landscape
A single 90° turn swaps the dimensions exactly, with no interpolation at all.
Choosing an angle
| Situation | Angle | Quality impact |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait photo showing sideways | 90° left or right | None (exact pixel remap) |
| Upside-down image | 180° | None (exact pixel remap) |
| Slightly tilted horizon | −3° to +3° | Slight softening from resampling |
| Crooked document scan | −5° to +5° | Slight softening from resampling |
| Creative or diagonal layout | any | Resampling plus filled corners |
How it works
A rotation by a multiple of 90° is a pure index remap: every source pixel lands exactly on a destination pixel, so nothing is interpolated and nothing softens. Export as PNG and the result is bit-identical to the original data, just rearranged.
Any other angle is different. Source pixels no longer align with the destination grid, so each output pixel is interpolated from several neighbours, which very slightly softens fine detail. The canvas also has to grow: rotating a w × h image by θ needs a bounding box of w·|cos θ| + h·|sin θ| wide and w·|sin θ| + h·|cos θ| tall. An 800 × 400 image at 30° becomes 893 × 746.
That growth exposes four triangular corners that contain no image data. When the output format supports transparency, they are left transparent by default, which is usually what you want for a rotated logo. When the output is JPG, which has no alpha channel, they must be painted, so the corner-fill colour picker appears automatically.
Common problems and how to fix them
- The image got bigger after rotating
- A rotated rectangle needs a larger bounding box to contain its corners. Crop afterwards with the Image Cropper to trim back to a clean rectangle.
- There are white or coloured triangles in the corners
- Those are the exposed corners. Set the corner fill colour to match your background, or export as PNG or WebP with the fill switched off to keep them transparent.
- My photo is still sideways in one particular app
- That app is reading the EXIF orientation flag on top of the already-rotated pixels. Rotate here. The output has no EXIF, so every viewer agrees.
- The image got slightly softer
- Only free angles resample. If you only need a quarter turn, use the 90° buttons, which are mathematically exact.
Frequently asked questions
Does rotating by 90° reduce quality?
The geometry is exact, and no pixel is interpolated. Any quality change comes only from re-encoding to a lossy format such as JPEG, which loses a little. Export as PNG if you want a bit-exact result.
Why does my image get bigger when I rotate by 15°?
A rotated rectangle needs a larger bounding box to contain its corners. For JPG the extra area is filled with your background colour; PNG and WebP leave it transparent unless you turn on "Fill the exposed corners". Crop afterwards if you want to remove it.
My phone photo appears sideways in other apps. Will this fix it?
Yes. Phone cameras often store the image sideways plus an EXIF orientation flag that some apps ignore. This tool applies the flag and writes real rotated pixels, so the result looks correct everywhere.
Can I rotate and flip at the same time?
Use the Image Flipper for mirroring. Running one tool then the other works fine. Each export is a normal image file.
How do I rotate an image by exactly 1 degree?
Drag the free-angle slider. It moves in 1° steps across the full −180° to +180° range, and the current angle is shown numerically beside the label.
What is EXIF orientation and why does it matter?
It is a metadata flag that tells a viewer to rotate the image before displaying it. Cameras use it so they never have to rewrite pixel data. Some software honours it and some ignores it, which is exactly why the same photo can look upright in one app and sideways in another.
Can I rotate several images at once?
Yes. Drop up to 20 files, set the angle, press "Process all images" and download the ZIP.