How to rotate and flip an image that's sideways or mirrored

Rotate or flip: what's the difference

Rotating and flipping solve different problems. Rotating changes the orientation: it is what you do when the photo shows up sideways, with the top pointing left or right. The rotate tool offers 90°, 180° and 270°, clockwise. Flipping creates the reflected image, like a mirror: it swaps left and right and fixes the selfie where you appear "backwards" and any text in the scene reads reversed. Both tools keep the file format and the image size; in PNG nothing else changes, and in JPG and WebP the photo is re-saved at high quality.

How to rotate a photo that came out sideways

Photos taken with the phone turned on its side often arrive sideways on the computer because the orientation flag got lost along the way. Rotating by 90° (or 270°, if it is lying the other way) puts the image upright for real: the pixels are redrawn in the new position, so the photo looks right in every program, not only the ones that read the flag.

1. Open the rotate image tool.
2. Upload the sideways photo: JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF, one or several at once.
3. In the angle list next to the button, pick 90° (selected by default), 180° or 270°. The turn is clockwise: 270° equals a quarter turn to the left.
4. Click "Rotate and download" (or "Rotate N images"). Each photo downloads as a separate file, in the same format, with "-girado" added to the name. If you got the side wrong, upload the rotated file again and pick another angle.

How to flip a mirrored selfie

The front camera often saves selfies mirrored: you see yourself as in a mirror, but any word behind you reads backwards. The flip tool has no options: upload the image and click "Flip and download". It flips the photo horizontally (left becomes right) and puts the scene back to normal, with the text readable again. The downloaded file gets "-espelhado" added to its name and the screen confirms with "Done! Your image was flipped.". There is no vertical flip. If the photo is upside down, what fixes it is a 180° rotation; flipping top to bottom is a different thing, and the tool does not do it.

What changes in the file when you rotate or flip

• PNG: nothing changes but the position of the pixels, no loss at all.
• JPG and WebP: the photo is re-saved at 92% quality. The difference does not show on screen, but avoid rotating and saving the same file many times, because the loss adds up with each pass.
• GIF: the image is saved with up to 256 colors and transparency is kept, but an animated GIF becomes a still image of the first frame. To rotate an animation, you need another program.
• Width and height swap places at 90° and 270°; at 180° and in the flip, the dimensions stay the same.
• The photo's hidden data (location, device model, date) does not come along: the file comes out clean. Good for publishing; if you want to keep the original date, keep the file from before.
• There is no on-screen preview: you pick the angle, download and check in your viewer.

Rotate first or flip first?

When in doubt, start with the rotation to get the photo upright; if you then notice the scene is reflected (backwards text, a detail that should be on the other side), apply the flip to the already-rotated file. Both tools keep the original format, so the fixes can be chained. In PNG that costs nothing; in JPG and WebP, each pass re-saves the photo at high quality, so do only the two passes you need, always starting from the best file you have.

Common mistakes when rotating and flipping images

• Flipping when the problem was orientation: if the photo is sideways, rotating is what fixes it. Flipping only swaps left and right.
• Rotating when the problem was mirroring: a selfie with backwards text is not fixed by any rotation; it needs a flip.
• Expecting an animated GIF to stay animated: in both tools it comes out still.
• Uploading HEIC, BMP, TIFF or SVG: the tools accept only JPG, PNG, WebP and GIF. Convert first with each format's own tool.
• Rotating by 90° and getting the photo lying the other way: it was a 270° case. Upload the rotated file and apply 180° to fix it.

Everything happens in your browser: the image is redrawn and saved on your own device and is never sent to any server.

Limit: up to 2 GB per file, with no limit on how many. Giant images depend on the browser's memory; if one fails, try one at a time.

In short: a sideways photo needs a 90° or 270° rotation; an upside-down photo, 180°; a selfie with reversed text, a horizontal flip. Pick, download and check, and prefer PNG when the image will still go through other edits. If the photo only showed up sideways after you stripped its hidden data, the cause is explained in how to remove metadata from photos, documents and videos; and for a mirrored video, the right tool is in how to convert a video to MP4.