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WGX

Image Rotator

Turn a photo the right way up.

Choose a picture

JPEG, PNG or WebP. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded.

SavedExample

1600 × 900

turn the picture, then press Save

Choose a picture to get started.

Why photographs arrive on their side

A phone does not turn its sensor when you turn the phone. It records the frame the way the sensor saw it and notes which way up it should be shown, in a scrap of metadata called the orientation tag. Anything that reads the tag — your gallery, most browsers — shows the picture correctly. Anything that ignores it, which is a great deal of older software and plenty of upload forms, shows the raw frame lying on its side.

This page reads the tag, so a photo like that already looks upright here. Press Save without turning it, and the file you download has the pixels themselves the right way up — nothing has to be trusted to read a tag afterwards. Turn it only if it still looks wrong here.

Turning, flipping and mirroring

  • Turning moves the picture round a quarter at a time. A quarter turn swaps the width and the height; the content is untouched.
  • Flipping horizontally mirrors it. This is not a rotation: text reads backwards, and a face you know looks a little wrong even when nobody can say why.
  • Flipping vertically is mirroring and turning half way round — which is why the tool describes it that way rather than pretending it is a separate operation.

What a turn costs

Rotating by a quarter moves whole pixels into new places without resampling, so the picture itself loses nothing. What costs a little is saving: a JPEG or WebP has to be encoded again, and every such encode discards a small amount. A PNG is lossless and costs nothing at all. If the file then needs to be smaller, that is the Image Compressor.

Why there is no angle slider

Straightening a horizon by three degrees is a different operation: every pixel has to be recalculated from its neighbors, which softens the picture, and the corners come out empty and have to be filled or cut away. A tool that offered it beside the quarter turns would make the two look equivalent when only one is free. If you need the frame changed rather than the angle, the Image Cropper is next door.

Nothing is uploaded

The picture is opened, redrawn and saved by your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and the test suite for this page records the requests the tool makes while a file is processed and fails if one of them could carry it.

Questions

How do I rotate an image?

Choose the file and press Turn left or Turn right. The preview turns straight away; press Save when it looks right and download the result.

Why does my photo keep appearing sideways?

Phones photograph in one orientation and record which way up the picture should be in a small piece of metadata. Software that reads it shows the photo correctly; software that ignores it shows the raw frame, on its side. This page reads that tag, so such a photo already looks upright here: press Save without turning it, and the file you download has the pixels themselves the right way up, so it looks the same everywhere.

What is the difference between rotating and flipping?

Rotating turns the picture around; the content is unchanged. Flipping mirrors it, so it is the picture reversed — writing reads backwards and faces look subtly wrong to people who know them. Flipping vertically is the same as mirroring and turning half way round.

Does rotating an image reduce the quality?

The pixels are moved, not resampled, so a quarter turn loses no detail in itself. Saving a JPEG or WebP means encoding it again, which costs a little; a PNG is lossless and costs nothing.

Can I rotate by a few degrees to straighten a horizon?

Not here. An angle that is not a quarter turn has to invent pixels along every edge and resample the whole picture, and a tool that did it quietly would make images softer than the person expected. This one does quarter turns and mirrors only.

Is my file uploaded?

No. Your browser opens the picture, draws it the new way round and encodes it again on your own machine. The test suite for this page fails if any request the tool makes could carry the file.

  • Image Editor

    Crop, resize, turn, fix the light and add text to a picture in one place, with every step undoable — without uploading it.

  • Image Cropper

    Keep the part of the picture you want.

  • Rotate PDF

    Turn the pages of a PDF the right way up, one page or all of them, and save it.