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Geometry
Rotate or flip an image
Photos taken with the phone held sideways often come out lying down. This turns the pixels themselves, so the result is right way up everywhere, not just in the viewer you happened to fix it in.
Preview
Why the phone gets it wrong
Cameras do not usually rotate the pixels when you turn the phone. They store the picture the way the sensor read it and add an orientation tag saying which way up it should be shown. Most software honours that tag, some does not, and anything that strips metadata loses it entirely. That is why an image looks fine on your phone and arrives sideways in somebody's inbox.
This tool draws the image at its correct orientation and then rotates the pixels for real. The result needs no tag to display properly, which is what you want for an upload, a print shop or an attachment.
One thing to know: turning a JPEG this way means decoding and re-encoding it, which costs a little quality. Rotating by exact right angles can in principle be done losslessly, but not through a browser canvas. Keep the quality slider at 92 or above and the loss is not something you will see.
Common questions
What is the difference between rotating and mirroring?
Rotating turns the image around its centre. Mirroring reflects it, so text reads backwards. Mirroring is for selfies and for scans made through a transparency; it is almost never what you want for a document.
Can I rotate by an arbitrary angle, like 3 degrees, to straighten a scan?
Not here. Off-axis rotation needs interpolation and a decision about what to do with the corners, which is a different tool and a different set of controls. Right angles and mirrors only.
Does it keep the metadata?
No. Re-encoding through a canvas discards Exif, including the orientation tag, which in this case is exactly right: the pixels no longer need one.
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