Some people seem confused on how to rotate images they upload. Not everyone has the time to figure this out on their own, so I figured I'd write a HOWTO.
First, why would one want to rotate an image? Well, some cameras / phones take pictures with a "native" orientation and add rotation metadata to the file so that image viewers know to display the image rotated. However, not all image viewers support this- they will display the image and ignore which way it is told to rotate, and when you upload images a conversion process takes place to reduce the size of the image- at which point this metadata gets lost. In other cases, your phone when taking images may mistake which orientation the photo was taken in- saving it like you held your phone sideways when you held it upward.
The result is typically something like this:
This is really frustrating because the time you spent taking the images, putting together your well-thought-out post, etc all ends up looking silly rather than nice like:
Second, there are many ways to accomplish this. You can use online tools to accomplish this, or your computer. Each method:
Method 1: Online tools
The easier method is to search "rotate images online", where you will find a _TON_ of sites that will rotate images for you. The problem with these sites is threefold:
- They are all unique and have their own process to upload and rotate images
- They are often loaded with advertising and annoyances- they need their ad revenue after all
- Uploading images to a service like this is sharing information publicly that you may not wish to share with just anybody, even though you may intend to share it on a site like skoolie.net.
That being said, its hard to beat them if you just want to rotate that one image that came out wrong and don't care about doing this multiple times. Since I cannot show how precisely to use any and all image rotation services, I'll show how to do it here:
https://www.aconvert.com/image/rotate/
Again, this varies per service, and the link above can change. Overall the process is similar no matter where you go.
First, get to the page, and look for a way to upload/browse for your desired image.
The process is the same as when uploading, you'll have to find the image on your computer you want to upload.
The site will either have "clockwise"/"counter clockwise" or allow you to rotate at specific angles. If specifying an angle is the method, 90 degrees will usually do a clean rotate clockwise, 180 will rotate the image upside-down, and 270 will do the reverse of 90.
After which you will usually be required to click submit.
Sometimes, there's even a fancy progress bar!
What happens afterward varies as well. Sometimes a link is generated (see the bottom of the screenshot below), sometimes it just prompts you to save.
If it generates a link, you can right click the link to save the image. When saving you'll see a similar dialog as to when you uploaded.
Method 2: Your computer may have software already installed, able to do this for you.
For Windows 7/10, the image viewer can do this. Open the image,
Click the rotate icon.
For Mac OSX, the preview tool can do this. Find your image, open it with Preview.
Click "Rotate Left" until your image is in the correct orientation.
Click File -> Save to save the newly rotated image.
You should see the image update in Finder (or your desktop as shown).
Method 3: If your computer lacks these tools or you want something a little more powerful, GIMP is a freely available image editor you can download.
Available for download here:
https://www.gimp.org/
Installing new software is always harder and GIMP isn't as simple as the above methods, and GIMP is oriented towards professionals that require lots of powerful features.
I cannot walk you through installation as it varies per OS, however once installed you can right click your image to
Open With GIMP:
If it asks you about Keeping / Converting color spaces, choose Keep. You can then use
Image -> Transform -> Rotate X degrees.
Finally, to overwrite the existing file, click
File > Overwrite filename, otherwise click
File > Export As...
Unfortunately I don't have the means to make a guide for iOS or Android at this time.
Linear Mode
