Rotate and flip images
Turn sideways photos the right way up, or mirror them, and have them look the same in every app.
- Processed on your device. Your photos are never uploaded. How we know
- Free, no sign-up, no watermark
Drop photos to rotate or flip
Drop files, paste with Ctrl+V, or choose them from your device.
PixWrench’s code runs on your device. We don’t receive your files, file names or their contents.
PixWrench’s code runs on your device. We don’t receive your files, file names or their contents. What happens to your files
How to rotate a sideways photo and make it stay that way
A photo that looks fine on your phone can turn up sideways in an email, a document or an upload form. This tool shows every image in a gallery, lets you turn or mirror each one, and saves copies whose pixels are already the right way round, so there is nothing left for other software to misread.
Rotating is often the first step in tidying a batch. Afterwards you might crop away the edges, shrink the photos or check what else they carry with the EXIF viewer.
- 1
Add the photos
Drop in one image or a whole set. Each appears in the gallery the way it should look, using its orientation tag.
- 2
Turn or mirror
Use left, right, 180° or the flip buttons on any image, or apply the same change to every image in one go.
- 3
Download upright copies
Save images one at a time or as a single zip. The new files need no orientation tag to display correctly.
What this tool does
- Rotate left or right by 90°, or turn 180°
- Flip horizontally or vertically
- Gallery view to fix each image separately, or apply one change to all
- EXIF orientation baked into the pixels, then reset
- JPG and WebP re-saved at quality 92; PNG stays lossless
- Batch download as a zip, with duplicate names numbered
A sideways test photo made permanently upright
Our test file photo-rotated.jpg stores its pixels as 1200 × 900 (landscape) plus an EXIF orientation value telling viewers to turn it a quarter turn clockwise. Apps that honor the tag show a 900 × 1200 portrait; apps that ignore it show it lying on its side.
Baking that rotation in produces a 900 × 1200 JPG with orientation reset to normal. We measured the result with the same MozJPEG encoder at quality 92 in Node (script measure-t1.mjs): 176 KB in, 165 KB out. Width and height swap on every 90° turn; a 180° turn or a flip keeps them as they are.
Why photos come out sideways
Cameras usually save the picture the way the sensor read it, then add an Orientation tag in the EXIF metadata, a standard maintained by the camera industry body CIPA, that says how to turn it for display. Browsers apply that tag by default, as MDN documents for the CSS image-orientation property, but not every program does.
PixWrench decodes the image, applies the tag to the pixels themselves, applies any turns or flips you chose, then writes a fresh file with orientation set to normal. JPG and WebP are encoded at quality 92 with MozJPEG or libwebp in WebAssembly, and PNG losslessly.
Rotate or flip: what each one does
| Button | Effect | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Rotate left | 90° counterclockwise; width and height swap | A picture whose top points right |
| Rotate right | 90° clockwise; width and height swap | A picture whose top points left |
| 180° | Upside down to right way up | Phone held the wrong way round |
| Flip horizontal | Mirror left to right | Mirrored selfies with back-to-front writing |
| Flip vertical | Mirror top to bottom | Mirror-image scans and reflections |
Good to know
- For JPG and WebP, rotating here means re-encoding once at quality 92. That is visually very close, but the file is not bit-for-bit the same as the original.
- Only quarter turns and flips are offered. Straightening a slight tilt needs a photo editor.
- If a photo looks right here but wrong somewhere else, the other app is ignoring the orientation tag; the saved copy from this tool fixes that.
- Turning a 50-megapixel photo takes a lot of memory, so phones and low-memory devices stop at 24 MP and offer to scale larger pictures to 6,000 px on the long side.
What happens to your files
Processed on your device. Your photos are never uploaded. PixWrench’s code runs on your device. We don’t receive your files, file names or their contents.
Every turn and flip is calculated in this browser tab, and the new files are written on your device. We never receive the photos or their names. The orientation tag is reset; other metadata follows the setting you choose, with location removable while date and camera details stay.
Ad and analytics scripts also load on this page, independently of the tool, as set out in the privacy policy.
Related tools and guides
Questions people ask
Why is my photo sideways on my computer but not on my phone?
The phone reads the EXIF orientation tag and the other program doesn’t. Saving a copy here bakes the rotation into the pixels, so it looks right everywhere.
Can I rotate many images at once?
Yes. Use apply to all for a batch, or turn individual pictures in the gallery, then download a zip.
Is rotating a JPG lossless?
Not here. The image is re-encoded once at quality 92, which keeps it visually very close to the original.
How do I mirror a selfie?
Use Flip horizontal. Writing in the picture will read the right way round.
Does rotating remove location data?
It can. Pick Remove all metadata or Remove location, keep the rest. The guide to removing location from photos explains the options on each device.
Sources and review
- MDN: image-orientation
- CIPA DC-008: Exif standard (CIPA standards list)
- jSquash: WebAssembly image codecs (GitHub)
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