Image Rotator

How do you rotate or straighten an image and save the result?

Choose an image, select 90° CW, 180°, or 90° CCW, and check the preview. For a tilted horizon or scan, set Custom angle instead. Click Apply & Download to open the result screen, then click Download to save the file. The first button confirms the edit; the second saves it.

For a worked example, start with an image displayed at 1200 × 800 pixels with no EXIF correction needed. A 90° clockwise turn displays it at 800 × 1200. To straighten a slight tilt, try 5° and compare the two corner options below. These dimensions follow the engine's rounding rules, rather than an estimate based on the preview's screen size.

Output dimensions for a 1200 × 800 image

Setting	Output dimensions	Effect on edges
90° CW	800 × 1200	No new corner areas
5°, crop off	1265 × 902	Background fills exposed corners
5°, Crop to remove corners	1143 × 703	Central crop discards outer content

Use the expanded result when every edge matters, such as a complete scanned page. Use the cropped result when a rectangular photo without corner triangles matters more. Check that a signature, caption, or face near an edge survives before downloading.

How does a custom angle change the canvas size?

Custom angle provides a slider and numeric field from −180° to +180°, with a 1° slider step. Positive values rotate clockwise; negative values rotate counterclockwise. The presets select an angle rather than adding another turn to the current setting. Clicking an already selected preset returns the angle to zero.

For source width W, height H, and angle θ, the bounding box uses width = round(|W cos θ| + |H sin θ|) and height = round(|W sin θ| + |H cos θ|). Convert degrees to radians before using sine and cosine. Right-angle turns swap width and height; a half-turn keeps both dimensions.

Crop to remove corners uses the largest axis-aligned rectangle inside the rotated source. Its width and height are rounded down, bounded by the canvas dimensions, and kept at least one pixel. The crop is centered. It is an automatic geometric crop, not a draggable selection; use Image Cropper for a manually chosen frame.

What is the difference between rotating and flipping?

Rotation changes the direction the image faces. A horizontal flip mirrors left and right, making text read backward; a vertical flip exchanges top and bottom. Flip offers None, ↔ H, and ↕ V. Only one flip choice is active at a time, and it can be combined with rotation.

The transform reflects the oriented source along its own selected axis, then rotates it. This order matters when combining a flip with a quarter-turn. Inspect recognizable text or an asymmetric feature in the preview instead of assuming horizontal always means the final screen's horizontal axis. Each preview is rendered from the input file with the current settings, rather than repeatedly editing the previous preview.

How does lossless JPEG rotation work?

Lossless (JPEG only) starts enabled. For eligible edits, the tool copies the JPEG and updates EXIF Orientation, tag 0x0112, without changing compressed pixels. It composes the existing orientation with your flip and turn, supporting values 1 through 8, including mirrored variants. Existing entries retain their byte order; if no usable entry exists, a minimal EXIF segment is inserted.

This differs from physically rearranging and recompressing pixels. An existing tag is patched without changing file length; adding a segment increases the file length. The result screen confirms Lossless: pixels untouched. Eligibility requires a JPEG input and output, a multiple-of-90° angle, no corner crop, and the default white background setting. Changing quality does not recompress an eligible lossless result.

Disable lossless mode when the destination ignores EXIF. The normal path decodes the image, handles its orientation, draws the edit onto a canvas, and encodes it again. JPEG encoding can change detail. Keeping an original copy lets you compare the rendered result without repeatedly recompressing the same photograph.

Why does the preview show an EXIF correction?

A JPEG can store direction separately from its pixel grid. When a non-normal orientation is detected, the EXIF corrected notice describes it, including rotated and mirrored cases. Judge your next edit from the displayed image: do not automatically add a quarter-turn merely because the camera stored a rotated orientation.

The canvas path checks whether the browser's decoder already applies orientation, avoiding a second correction when it does. Lossless mode instead combines your edit with the existing tag. Neither path is a metadata-removal feature: lossless editing preserves other JPEG bytes, so do not treat rotation as a way to remove location or camera information.

Which background, output format, and quality should you choose?

Non-right-angle rotations reveal Background controls: White, Black, Light gray, Transparent, and Custom color. Select PNG or WebP for transparent corners. With JPEG output, Transparent falls back to white. Corner cropping discards the filled areas instead of preserving a colored or transparent border.

Output offers Original, JPEG, PNG, and WebP. Original requests JPEG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF for matching inputs; GIF and BMP become PNG. Browser encoder support determines whether a requested format is available. Choose an explicit output when you need a particular destination format. The canvas export is a still image, not an animation-preserving conversion.

Quality appears for JPEG and WebP when lossless preservation is inactive. It ranges from 50% to 100% and starts at 95%; it is an encoder setting, not a target file size. PNG does not use that slider. Use Image Compressor when file-size reduction is your next task.

What are the processing limits and privacy details?

The chooser lists JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, and BMP and accepts files up to 100 × 1024 × 1024 bytes, labeled 100 MB. Only the first selected file is used. Decode and canvas memory limits still apply, so acceptance by file size does not guarantee that a very large image will render.

Rotation processes file bytes locally and creates a browser object URL for the preview. The site's Content Security Policy permits connections only to this site; the rotation path does not upload your image. Settings changes wait 150 milliseconds before starting a new render and cancel superseded work. That delay is not a completion-time guarantee. Wait until Rendering… finishes before applying.

Use Back to editing to adjust the result or Rotate another to choose a different file. For several images, follow Bulk Image Rotate rather than selecting multiple files here.