How to rotate or flip an image

Right angles and free angles

Rotating by 90, 180 or 270 degrees moves the pixels exactly as they are with no smoothing, and at 90 degrees the width and height swap. A free angle, like 3 degrees to straighten a tilted photo, recalculates the pixels, so edges and fine detail become slightly softer.

Expand or clip?

At a free angle, the corners of the picture stick out of the original rectangle. You have two choices: expand the canvas to fit the whole picture and fill the empty corners with a color you pick, or keep the original size and cut off what falls outside. The first keeps all of the picture, the second keeps the size.

How to do it

1. Open the Image rotator and flipper tool and choose your image.
2. Use the buttons to rotate 90 degrees right or left or 180, or move the slider, or type an angle between -180 and 180.
3. Turn on the horizontal or vertical flip if you need it.
4. For free angles, choose expand or clip and the background color, then download.

Why do some phone photos show up sideways?

Phones sometimes save the photo's orientation as a note inside the file instead of turning the pixels themselves. Some programs read that note and some ignore it, so the photo looks right to you and sideways somewhere else. The tool applies that orientation first and then your rotation, so the file comes out facing the same way everywhere.

Details worth knowing

• A positive angle turns clockwise. The flip is applied first, then the rotation.
• JPEG and WebP are saved at quality 92, a slight loss even for right-angle turns. Choose PNG if you want to lose nothing.
• JPEG has no transparency, so empty corners are filled with the background color. A transparent background is available for PNG and WebP only.
• Tested limits: 40 MB and 50 megapixels, one image at a time.

After rotating, if you want to focus on the product and trim the edges, use the Image cropper. And if the sideways page is inside a PDF, the right tool is Rotate PDF pages.