Rotate Photos by 90 Degrees or Any Custom Angle
Fix sideways pictures with a quarter-turn, or straighten a crooked one with a fine angle slider.
About the Image Rotator
Two kinds of rotation are covered here. The quarter-turn presets — 90 degrees clockwise, 180, and 90 anticlockwise — handle the everyday problem of a photograph that arrived on its side, and they reposition the pixels exactly, swapping width and height for the quarter turns. The custom option unlocks a slider running from minus 180 to plus 180 degrees, which is what you want for straightening a document photographed slightly askew or levelling a horizon.
A live preview updates as you move the slider, so the angle can be judged by eye rather than guessed. Output format can stay matched to the input or be set to PNG, JPG or WebP, with a quality slider for the lossy options, and several images can be rotated together under one setting. Everything is computed in the browser, which matters when the pictures being straightened are records rather than holiday snaps.
Key Features
- Quarter-turn presets: Ninety degrees each way and a half turn cover the common case of a sideways photograph.
- Fine angle control: The custom slider spans minus 180 to plus 180 degrees for straightening rather than turning.
- Live preview: The result redraws as you drag the slider, so a small correction can be judged visually.
- Batch rotation: Apply the same angle to a set of images in one run.
- Format and quality choice: Keep the input format or export as PNG, JPG or WebP, with a quality slider for the lossy ones.
How to Use the Image Rotator
- Add one or more images.
- Pick a quarter-turn preset, or choose the custom option to reveal the angle slider.
- Watch the preview and adjust until the framing is right.
- Choose an output format if you want something other than the input, then rotate and download.
How It Works
Rotation is a canvas transform: a new canvas is created large enough to hold the rotated bounding box, the drawing origin is moved to its centre, the context is rotated, and the source is drawn. That bounding-box calculation explains the behaviour people ask about most — at any angle that is not a multiple of ninety, the canvas has to grow and the four corners are left empty, appearing transparent in PNG or WebP output and white if you export as JPG. Rotation also re-encodes the image rather than rewriting an orientation flag, so this is not a lossless operation and embedded EXIF metadata does not survive into the output.
When You Need It
A social worker writing up a visit has photographed several pages of handwritten notes on a phone, and half of them have come out rotated because the device could not decide which way up the page was. Those notes name a family and describe a safeguarding concern, so correcting the orientation through a public image site is not an option the case file could withstand. Field engineers documenting equipment and archivists digitising old letters straighten photographs under similar sensitivity.