Image Rotate / Flip

Rotate an image in 90° steps and flip horizontally or vertically

Click to select or drop a file here

How it works

Image Rotate / Flip — Rotate an image in 90° steps and flip horizontally or vertically. All processing happens in your browser — no upload, no signup, no email required. Free forever.

Last updated: 2026-05-06

Editor's note

We built this the week a friend's passport photo came back from a phone scan rotated 90°, got sent to an embassy in that state because the gallery app showed it upright via an EXIF tag the embassy's PDF pipeline did not respect, and the application got bounced. Rotation is supposed to be the most trivial operation in image editing. The trick is that "trivial" depends on every tool in the chain agreeing on whether the pixels or the metadata describes the orientation, and that agreement is not safe to assume.

So our rotate bakes the rotation into the pixels and strips the EXIF orientation tag at the same time. That way the file looks identical in a phone gallery, a browser, a Word doc, and whatever government PDF processor is judging you next week. We considered a non-destructive mode that only flips the EXIF flag and concluded it was a footgun — the whole point of using this tool is that you no longer trust EXIF to survive the trip.

About Image Rotate / Flip

Image Rotate / Flip fixes orientation problems in seconds — turn a sideways phone shot upright, flip a selfie horizontally, or rotate a scanned document by 180°. It handles the boring task that almost every image workflow eventually hits, without needing to crack open a heavy editor.

Photographers use it to correct EXIF-orientation glitches that some tools ignore. Designers flip mockups to test layout symmetry. Anyone scanning documents on their phone uses it to straighten pages. The preview updates live so you can stack rotation and flips until the image looks right.

Everything runs on a canvas in your browser — your photo never gets uploaded, which is the right default for personal images, ID scans, and confidential paperwork.

How to use Image Rotate / Flip

Drop or pick the image you want to rotate or flip.
Click Rotate 90° (clockwise) as many times as you need — the preview updates after each click.
Toggle Flip horizontal to mirror left-right (handy for fixing selfies that came out reversed).
Toggle Flip vertical for an upside-down mirror — useful for design mockups and reflective compositions.
Click Download PNG for a lossless save, or Download JPG if you need a smaller file.

Common use cases

Rotating a phone photo that came in sideways because of a missed orientation tag.
Flipping a selfie horizontally so text in the background reads correctly.
Turning a scanned document 180° after an upside-down scan.
Mirroring a product mockup to preview how it would look as a left-handed variant.
Correcting drone footage stills that exported with the wrong rotation metadata.

Tips & common mistakes

If the photo already looks correct in your phone but wrong everywhere else, the file has an EXIF orientation tag that not every tool respects. Open it here and download to bake the correct rotation into the pixels.
Combine flip horizontal with flip vertical to achieve a 180° rotation without using the rotate button.
PNG is the safe pick for download — 90° rotations are pixel-exact in PNG. JPG re-encodes and will lose a tiny bit of fidelity each time.
If a JPG is hugely important, rotate once and stop. Multiple JPG round-trips slowly accumulate compression artifacts.

Frequently asked questions

Are 90° rotations lossless?

For PNG output: yes — 90° rotations only swap pixel positions, no resampling. For JPEG inputs we still re-encode the canvas, so use the lossless PNG download for best fidelity.

Can I combine rotation and flip?

Yes. Toggles stack: rotate 90°, then flip horizontally, then flip vertically — the preview reflects each step in real time.

Is my image uploaded?

No. Both the live preview and the download are produced locally via canvas — your photo never leaves the device.

Can I rotate by an arbitrary angle like 17°?

The current tool focuses on 90° steps and flips because they're lossless and pixel-perfect. Free-angle rotation introduces resampling and edge anti-aliasing — that's planned as a separate tool when we add a straighten/level feature.

Will the rotated image keep its EXIF metadata?

No — re-encoding through canvas drops EXIF, IPTC, and XMP. That's actually a privacy bonus when sharing. If you need to keep camera metadata, use a non-destructive rotation in your photo library instead.

Why does my image look different after rotating in this tool versus my phone gallery?

Phone galleries often display the EXIF-rotated version without rewriting the file. This tool actually rewrites the pixels, so the result is identical everywhere — including in tools that ignore EXIF orientation.