Images can have landscape (horizontal) or portrait (vertical) orientations. Rotating images 90 or 180 degrees enables you to change the orientation of photos. This can be useful when you think a picture would look better with a different orientation.
You can rotate images in many ways within Windows 11. Windows 11 has built-in options and three pre-installed apps with which you can rotate pictures. However, you can also rotate images with myriad editing software and web apps. Here are six different methods for rotating images on a Windows 11 PC.
1. How to Rotate Images With File Explorer
Windows File Explorer incorporates two basic options for rotating images left and right. Those options will be adequate when you only need to apply basic rotating to images. This is how you’re able to rotate an image in File Explorer:
Alternatively, you may select the same options on File Explorer’s context menu. Right-click an image and selectRotate leftorRotate right. Those are convenient shortcuts for rotating images saved on the desktop.
2. How to Rotate Images With the Photos App
Photos is Windows 11’s default image viewer app that includes some editing options. Among them is a basicRotateoption for 90-degree rightward rotation. You can rotate images with that option as follows:
Or you can select alternative clockwise or anticlockwise rotation options. To do so, press theEdit imagebutton beside theRotateoption in Photos. Then click theRotate image 90 degrees clockwiseorRotate image 90 degrees anticlockwiseoptions.
Note that Photos’ cropping tool also has a rotation bar. You can drag the slider on that bar to freely rotate the image by any angle within a cropping box. Everything outside the cropping box area gets cut out of the picture. Rotating an image like that is one of thedifferent ways to crop a picture in Windows 11.
3. How to Rotate Images With Paint
Paint is the graphics editor included with Windows 11. That pre-installed app has three rotation options with which to change the orientation of your images. This is how to rotate images with Paint:
You can also adjust an image’s orientation with Paint’s flipping options just below theRotatebutton. For example, clickingFlip verticalhas the same effect as theRotate 180°option.
4. How to Rotate Images With Edge’s Image Editor
Microsoft Edge is Windows 11’s pre-installed browser that now has a built-in image editor. That feature enables you to rotate images and apply other tweaks to pictures you find online before downloading them. It’s quite similar to the image editor in the Photos app. These are the steps for rotating images with Microsoft Edge:
You cannot upload images to rotate within Edge’s crop tool. If you want to utilize the tool for rotating your photos, upload the pictures to a cloud storage account like Google Drive to make them accessible within Edge.
Then you can right-click your uploaded photos there to selectEdit image. Our guide toediting images in Edgeprovides further details about how to tweak your photos with that browser.
5. How to Rotate Images With Online Image Tool
you may rotate images without installing software with the Online Image Tool web app. Unlike Edge’s image editor, that tool enables you to upload pictures on your PC for rotation. Plus, you can upload more than one file at a time to rotate multiple images in batches. This is how you can rotate photos with the Online Image Tool in a Windows browser:
Online Image Tool also has handy tools for batch resizing, converting, and compressing pictures. Click theCompress Any Image Format,Convert Image Formats, andResize Batch of Imageslinks along the top of the web app’s page to access them.
6. How to Rotate Images With IrfanView
IrfanView is a nifty image viewer app for Windows platforms that’s freely available. That app includes a custom rotation feature for rotating images at angles other than 90 or 180 degrees. You can install IrfanView and rotate images with that app like this:
If you want to try IrfanView’s custom rotation tool, press the app’sCtrl+Uhotkey. Input a rotation value up to 360 within theAnglebox. That will rotate the image by the value entered within its canvas. Then clickOKto view the rotated image output within IrfanView.
Rotate Images for a Better Orientation in Windows 11
So, you don’t need Adobe Photoshop to rotate images on a Windows 11 PC. It’s easy to correct image orientation on a Windows 11 PC with any of the rotation methods above. Choose whatever image rotation method you like best.
