Why do photos end up sideways?
A phone camera records every picture the same way and adds a small orientation tag that says how you held the phone. Your gallery reads the tag and shows the photo upright. Some websites, email programs and older software ignore the tag, so the same photo appears sideways or upside down.
Scanners work differently. A page fed in sideways is saved sideways, and only rotating the image fixes it.
FileKiwi first shows the photo the way your phone does. You choose the turn you need, and the saved file stores the picture already rotated, with no tag left to misread.
Rotate image, flip it, or rotate the PDF?
| Your file | Problem | What to use |
|---|---|---|
| Phone photo | Sideways after uploading | Rotate 90 right or left |
| Scanned page saved as JPG or PNG | Upside down | Rotate 180 |
| Selfie with backwards text | Mirrored, not turned | Flip Image |
| Scanned PDF document | Pages on their side | Rotate PDF |
A scanned PDF does not need to become images first: Rotate PDF turns its pages directly. Rotation works in steps of 90 degrees. A photo taken slightly crooked needs an editor with a straighten tool.
Formats and quality after rotating
JPG, PNG and WebP images keep their format. iPhone HEIC photos, AVIF and TIFF files are saved as JPG, while GIF, BMP and SVG become PNG.
PNG results lose nothing. JPG and WebP are saved again at 92% quality, which looks the same to the eye but is not a perfect copy, so rotate once from the original rather than many times over.
Scanned a stack of pages that all came out the same way? Add them together and turn them with one setting. Pages facing different ways need separate runs.
Does a form want the photo smaller after you turn it? Continue with Resize Image.