Rotate an image 90 degreesA quarter turn, done right
Drop a photo and it turns 90° clockwise straight away. Left and 180° are one tap away.
or drop it here — pasting works too
Drop one picture to work on it, or a folder of them to turn the lot by their own tags.
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A precise clockwise quarter turn on opening, with left and half turns beside it and no arbitrary-angle crop hidden in the operation.
The preview begins one quarter clockwise after a file opens. Width and height exchange places exactly.
What makes a quarter turn exact
A ninety-degree rotation changes pixel addresses without requiring the geometric compromise of a free angle. The first column becomes a row, the old width becomes the new height, and every source pixel has one destination. There are no triangular gaps to fill and no need to crop inward.
For a JPEG whose width and height are whole numbers of compressed blocks along the edge that moves, nothing is decoded at all: the blocks are rearranged and the quality slider disappears because there is nothing to re-encode. Other inputs still need a new image file, which is why quality and metadata controls remain visible for them. The important part is that the image is rendered once from the source. Pressing right twice does not encode a first result and then encode that result again; it updates one quarter-turn value and the final save reads the original pixels.
Cases that look similar but are not
- A sideways JPEG that looks correct in one viewer may have an EXIF orientation disagreement rather than physically turned pixels.
- A scan needing the same quarter turn across a folder belongs in a reviewed batch workflow, not a blind repeat of a single-file button.
- A horizon tilted by three degrees needs straightening, which introduces a crop-or-padding decision that a quarter turn never has.
Questions about the turn
Does a 90-degree turn need empty corners?
No. A quarter turn maps a rectangle exactly onto another rectangle with width and height exchanged. Empty wedges appear only at angles that are not multiples of 90 degrees.
Which way is 90° clockwise?
The way a clock's hands move: the top edge of the picture swings to the right-hand side. Right 90° is clockwise, Left 90° is anticlockwise (the same as 270° clockwise), and 180° turns the picture upside down. The preview opens one quarter clockwise; the buttons beside it change that from the original, not from the last preview.
Is the picture re-encoded?
Not for a JPEG whose size allows a block-exact turn: the compressed 8×8 blocks are moved and the written file is read back and compared with the original, coefficient by coefficient. If the size does not allow it, the page says so and offers to trim the partial edge strip; otherwise, and for every other format, the pixels are decoded, turned and written once.
Why does this open clockwise?
Clockwise is the most common correction after a portrait scan arrives on its side. The left and 180-degree buttons remain beside it, and each new choice is rendered from the original rather than from the previous preview.
90 Degrees