Rotate Image Online: Turn a Photo Left or Right

How do I rotate an image?

Choose a picture, press Rotate right to turn it a quarter turn clockwise or Rotate left for counterclockwise, then press Save picture. Press twice for a half turn. The preview changes at once, each press is one undo step, and the saved file has the turn applied to its pixels.

1. Press Choose a picture, drop a file, paste with Ctrl+V, or press Take a photo on a phone.
2. Press Rotate right or Rotate left until the picture stands the way you want. On a keyboard, [ turns left and ] turns right.
3. Open Export for the format, then press Save picture and download the file.

To fix a picture that is also slightly tilted, open Straighten next to Rotate. To cut away edges afterward, use Crop Image.

What happens to the size when I rotate?

A quarter turn swaps the width and height: a landscape picture becomes a portrait one with the same pixels. A half turn keeps the size and flips the picture upside down. The picture is redrawn once at the end, even after several turns, so extra presses add no further softening.

The editor merges neighboring turns, flips and crops into one drawing step, so rotating right and then left returns exactly the first picture.

Why does my photo open sideways?

A phone can save a photo in the sensor's own direction and stores a note, the Exif orientation tag, that tells viewers how to turn it. A viewer that ignores the note shows the photo sideways. This editor reads the note when it opens the picture, and the saved file is turned for good.

The Wikipedia article on Exif describes the orientation tag. If a picture still opens sideways in the editor, press Rotate until it looks right and save it. The new file has no orientation tag to misread.

Can I rotate an image by a custom angle?

Yes, in the Straighten tool next to Rotate. Drag the Angle slider anywhere from minus 45 to plus 45 degrees in steps of a tenth of a degree. With Auto-crop on, the empty corners are cut away; with it off, they stay see-through in PNG or take the background color in JPG.

Quarter turns are exact. Any other angle resamples every pixel, so a very small angle softens fine detail slightly. For an angle over 45 degrees, rotate a quarter turn first and then straighten the rest.

Does rotating an image reduce its quality?

A quarter turn moves every pixel to a new place without changing it, so nothing is lost until the file is saved. Saving a JPG or WebP compresses the picture again at the quality you pick in Export. Choose PNG when the rotated copy must match the original pixel for pixel.

The default JPG quality is 90, the same starting point as the Image Converter. To make the rotated file smaller afterward, use Compress Image or tick the size limit in Export.