About this tool
Rotating and flipping fix the orientation of a picture. A photo shot in portrait that opens sideways on a computer, a horizon that came out slightly tilted because you were holding the camera, a scan that arrived upside down — all of it lands here. A slightly crooked horizon is worth fixing precisely because viewers rarely identify what is wrong; they just find the picture unsettled.
Ninety-degree turns and arbitrary angles behave differently. Rotating by 90 or 180 degrees just moves pixels to new positions, so nothing is degraded at all. Rotating by something like 3 degrees means pixels no longer line up with the grid, colours have to be recalculated, and the image goes very slightly soft. It also leaves empty wedges in the four corners, so a crop usually follows. Flipping is different again: it mirrors the picture left-to-right or top-to-bottom, which is not the same as turning it. Your image is never uploaded. Editing and saving both happen inside your browser, so you can open files you would not want to hand to a server — photos with faces in them, internal documents, anything sensitive.
How to use
- Click "Pick an image & start" to open a file.
- Use Image > Rotate Canvas for 90 and 180 degree turns, or horizontal and vertical flips.
- To straighten a horizon, enter an angle directly and adjust in small steps. Line it up against something in the shot that should be level — a horizon, a window frame, a table edge.
- After an arbitrary rotation, crop away the empty corners.
- Save via File > Export.
Frequently asked questions
- Does rotating reduce quality?
- Not for 90 and 180 degree turns or flips — those only move pixels around. Only arbitrary angles require recalculating pixel colours, which softens the image very slightly. One pass is invisible, but repeated corrections accumulate, so try to land it in one go.
- My phone photo opens sideways.
- The image is stored in landscape with a separate EXIF note saying "display this rotated", and software that ignores that note shows it lying down. Rotate it upright and save, and it will be correct everywhere. Export drops EXIF, so there is no conflicting rotation flag left to confuse anything.
- How many degrees do I need to straighten a horizon?
- There is no standard value — do it by eye. Pick something in the shot that should be level and adjust a degree at a time until it looks right. Handheld shots are usually off by one to three degrees.
- Rotating left empty corners.
- That is expected. Turning a rectangle by anything other than a multiple of 90 degrees leaves wedges where there was never any image. Crop to the inside and it is clean again. Shooting slightly wider than you need leaves room for this.
- What is the difference between flipping and rotating?
- Rotating 180 degrees turns the picture upside down; flipping horizontally mirrors it. On a symmetrical subject the results look the same, but text gives it away instantly — rotated text is upside down, mirrored text is backwards and unreadable.
- My selfie looks reversed.
- Front cameras often show you a mirrored preview but save the real orientation, so the result does not match what you saw. Flip horizontally to get the familiar version — but check the photo first, because any text on clothing or signs in the background flips too and becomes unreadable.
- How is rotating a layer different from rotating the canvas?
- Rotating the canvas turns the entire image; rotating a layer turns only the currently selected one. With a single photo open the results are identical, but if you have added a logo or text on top, layer rotation lets you tilt just that element.
- My scan came in upside down.
- One 180 degree rotation. If it is lying sideways, turn it 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise as needed. None of these lose any quality, so rotate as many times as you like.