How to Rotate and Straighten a Photo

Two of the most common photo annoyances have the same quick fix: the picture that imported sideways, and the landscape with a horizon that slopes downhill. Both are about orientation, but they call for slightly different tools — rotating versus straightening.

Rotating: 90-degree turns

Rotation spins the image in 90-degree steps to fix a photo that came in sideways or upside down — usually because of how the phone was held. It's a clean operation: no pixels are lost, the image just turns. One or two taps and it's upright.

Straightening: small angle corrections

• Use it for a tilted horizon or a slightly crooked document photo.
• You nudge the image by a few degrees until lines look level.
• Straightening usually crops the corners slightly to keep the frame rectangular.

Do both, then crop

If a photo is both sideways and tilted, rotate it upright first, then straighten the small angle. Because straightening trims the corners, it pairs naturally with a crop to reframe the shot. All of this runs in your browser, so the photo stays on your device.