How to rotate or mirror a photo on an iPhone

Tinkering with their photos has been a practice among shutterbugs for a long time. Ever since mobile phones got the option to edit images, people have been spending a lot of time getting their pictures to look just right. One of the ways you can play around with your photos is to rotate or mirror them.

While there is the option to use third-party apps to rotate or mirror your pictures, the in-built Photos app has a suite of easy-to-use editing options you can use. This article will show you how to rotate or mirror an image on an iPhone.

How to rotate an image on an iPhone

Rotating an image can be a useful tool when you want the image to have a proper viewing angle or to change its orientation from landscape to portrait. Follow the steps below to rotate a photo on an iPhone:

1. Open the Photos app on the iPhone’s home screen.
2. Tap on the photo you want to rotate to view it in fullscreen.
3. Tap Edit in the top right corner, then tap on the Crop option at the bottom of the screen.
4. Tap on the Rotate icon (it looks like a rectangular box with an arrow pointing left) in the top left corner to rotate the image by 90 degrees to the left. You can tap the icon repeatedly to further rotate the image in increments of 90 degrees.

If you want to rotate an image at an angle that is not an increment of 90, tap on the Straighten icon under the photo (it will be the first circled option, selected by default). Then, you can drag the slider left or right to rotate the image accordingly. After you are done, tap Done in the bottom right corner of the screen to save the edited image.

How to flip or mirror an image on an iPhone

Mirroring an image means to flip the image either vertically or horizontally. There are a lot of reasons why someone would like a mirror image. It could be a creative choice or a solution to make text in an image more readable. The iPhone camera automatically mirrors selfies so you might want to revert that.

The method to flip or mirror an image is almost the same as the method to rotate an image:

1. Open the Photos app on the iPhone’s home screen.
2. Tap the photo you want to rotate to view it in full screen.
3. Tap Edit in the top right corner, then tap the Crop option at the bottom of the screen.
4. Tap the Flip icon (it looks like a triangle cut in half) in the top left corner to mirror the image on the horizontal axis.
5. After you are done, tap Done in the bottom right corner of the screen to save the edited image.