A photo that looks fine in your phone's gallery can turn up sideways once you upload it to a website or attach it to an email. This tool lets you rotate an image 90° either way or 180°, or flip it to make a mirror image. It also fixes that sideways phone photo problem on its own, before your chosen rotation is applied.
Why phone photos show up sideways
When you take a picture with your phone held sideways or upside down, the phone often saves the image the way the camera sensor captured it and adds a small note in the file saying which way is up. Your gallery reads that note and shows the photo correctly. Some websites, upload forms and older programs ignore the note, so the picture appears turned on its side.
Rotate image reads that orientation information first and applies it to the actual pixels. The result looks the same everywhere, whether or not the next app checks the note. Then it applies whichever rotation or flip you picked.
The five options
| Option | What it does | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Rotate 90° right | Turns the picture a quarter turn clockwise | A photo lying on its left side |
| Rotate 90° left | Turns it a quarter turn anticlockwise | A photo lying on its right side |
| Rotate 180° | Turns it upside down | A picture taken with the phone upside down |
| Flip horizontal | Mirrors left and right | Selfies where text reads backwards |
| Flip vertical | Mirrors top and bottom | Reflections, or an image scanned the wrong way up and back to front |
Rotating keeps the picture the same, just turned. Flipping makes a mirror image, so any writing in the photo will read backwards afterwards. That difference is easy to mix up, so open the result and check it before you send it on.
How to rotate an image
- Add the photos you want to fix. You can add up to 30 at once.
- Choose one option: 90° right, 90° left, 180°, flip horizontal or flip vertical.
- Start the tool and download. A single image downloads directly, and a batch comes back as a ZIP.
Every image in the batch gets the same option. If some photos need turning right and others left, do them in two rounds.
Not sure which way to turn it?
Look at where the top of the picture currently is. If the top is on the left, rotate 90° right. If it's on the right, rotate 90° left. If the picture is upside down, choose 180°.
Mirror image and flip uses
Some selfies come out mirrored, so a T-shirt slogan or a sign behind you reads backwards. Flip horizontal puts it the right way round. Designers and teachers also mirror images on purpose, for example to make two pictures face each other on a poster or slide.
Flip vertical is used less often. It helps with reflections in water and with scans that came out both upside down and reversed.
Everyday situations
Students photograph notes, whiteboards and textbook pages at odd angles and need them upright before putting them into an assignment. Job seekers upload a photo of a certificate to an application site and find it lying on its side, and office staff get scanned receipts that came through the same way.
If you're turning several photographed pages into a single document, rotate them here first, then combine them with JPG to PDF. If you need a smaller version for an upload form, use Resize image after rotating. For a PDF whose pages are sideways, Rotate PDF does the same job for every page in the file.
Limits
The tool rotates in quarter turns and flips. It doesn't straighten a photo that's slightly tilted, and it doesn't crop. Rotating doesn't change the picture's content, so a blurry photo stays blurry.
Privacy
Your photos are processed on our server and deleted as soon as the rotated images are sent back to you. Nothing is stored or shared, and no watermark is added. The tool is free, needs no account, and runs in the browser on Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebook. Uploads can be up to 100 MB.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my photo look fine on my phone but sideways online?
Your phone saved a note inside the photo saying which way is up, and the site you uploaded to ignored it. Running the photo through Rotate image applies that note to the picture itself, so it shows the right way round everywhere.
What's the difference between rotating and flipping?
Rotating turns the whole picture around its centre, like turning a printed photo on a table. Flipping mirrors it, so left becomes right (or top becomes bottom) and any text reads backwards.
How do I mirror a selfie?
Choose "Flip horizontal". This reverses the image left to right, which fixes selfies where writing appears backwards.
Can I rotate several images at once?
Yes, up to 30 in one go. They all get the same rotation and download together as a ZIP.
Can I rotate photos on my iPhone or Android phone?
Yes. Open the page in your phone's browser, tap "Select files", choose your photos and pick a rotation. The fixed images save to your downloads.
Is rotating images free?
Yes. There's no cost, no sign-up and no watermark on the results.
Can I rotate by a small angle to straighten a photo?
No. The tool turns images by 90° or 180° and flips them. It doesn't rotate by small angles.