How to Rotate an Image by Any Angle or Straighten a Crooked Photo

A horizon that tilts by two degrees ruins a landscape photo. Rotating by 90 degrees is not enough; you need small, precise angles.

Quick answer

Choose a picture, set the angle with the slider in steps of half a degree (or use the 90° and 180° buttons). The canvas grows so no part of the picture is cut off. Fill the new corners with transparency or a colour.

When to rotate by a small angle

• Crooked horizons on sea and landscape photos.
• Photos of documents taken at a slight tilt.
• Scanned pages placed unevenly on the glass.
• Creative design, such as tilted frames and stickers.

Steps

1. Open the tool and add a picture.
2. Move the slider; use a straight line in the image as a guide.
3. Choose transparent (PNG) or a background colour for the corners.
4. Download the result.

About the corners

Rotating a rectangle leaves empty triangles in the corners. You can:

• keep them transparent by saving as PNG, or
• fill with a colour such as white, or
• crop inside the rotated picture afterwards to remove the empty areas.

Tips

• Zoom in on the horizon to check it is level.
• Rotate a copy and keep the original.
• Each rotation resamples pixels, so rotate once at the final angle rather than many times.
• For a scan with text, Deskew Image can detect the angle automatically.