Image Rotator

Rotating the pixels, not a tag

This is the distinction that makes the tool useful. When you rotate a photograph in most phone galleries, the pixels do not move — an EXIF orientation tag is changed, and software that reads the tag displays it turned.

Software that ignores the tag shows it the original way round. That is why a picture can look correct on your phone and sideways once uploaded, emailed, or opened in a different program.

Here the pixels themselves are redrawn in the new orientation and saved out. There is no tag to ignore, so it looks the same everywhere.

Flipping is not rotating

A flip mirrors the image. It is useful for selfies, which front cameras often save mirrored, and for correcting a photograph taken through a reflection. Be careful with anything containing text — a flip makes writing read backwards, which is immediately obvious.

Rotation is lossless in principle

Turning an image by 90 or 180 degrees moves every pixel to a new position without changing its value, so no detail is lost. Saving as JPEG afterwards does apply one compression pass, which is why the output here is written at high quality.

Arbitrary angles are a different matter: rotating by 7 degrees has to interpolate between pixels, softening the image slightly and leaving triangular gaps at the corners. This tool sticks to right angles, where neither problem arises.

Common uses

• A photo that uploads sideways despite looking fine on your phone.
• Scans that came out in the wrong orientation.
• Un-mirroring a selfie.
• Fixing an image after EXIF removal, where the orientation tag it relied on is gone.

Questions people ask

Why does my photo look right on my phone but sideways elsewhere?

Because the rotation is stored as an EXIF tag rather than in the pixels. Software that ignores the tag shows the original orientation.

Does rotating lose quality?

Turning by 90 or 180 degrees moves pixels without changing them. Saving as JPEG afterwards applies one compression pass, which is why the output is written at high quality.

What is the difference between rotating and flipping?

Rotating turns the image; flipping mirrors it. A flip makes any text in the picture read backwards.

Can I rotate by a custom angle?

Not here. Arbitrary angles need interpolation, which softens the image and leaves gaps at the corners.

Your image is not uploaded

This is the part worth being precise about, because almost every other site offering these tools works differently.

When you choose a file here, your browser reads it from your disk into memory and draws it onto a canvas. The work happens on your own machine. No copy is transmitted, because this site is a set of static files with no server behind it capable of receiving one.

The practical consequences: it works with no internet connection once the page has loaded, there is no file size limit beyond your own memory, there is no queue, nothing is retained on anyone's disk afterwards, and your photographs are not passing through a third party's infrastructure.

You do not have to take that on trust. The about page lists every network request this site makes, read live from your own browser.