Rotate TIFF images online for free. Fix the orientation of scanned documents, medical images and GIS files; TIFF output is lossless.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) was created by Stephen Carlsen at the Aldus Corporation and first published in autumn 1986 as the standard interchange format for desktop scanners. Aldus released revisions through 5.0 (1988, which added LZW and palette color); revision 6.0 followed in 1992, and Adobe inherited the copyright when it acquired Aldus in 1994. The format's calling card is flexibility — a single.tiff file can hold one bilevel fax page, a 16-bit-per-channel astrophotograph, a CMYK prepress separation, or a 200-page document scan. That same flexibility is why orientation is so often wrong on arrival: scanners, fax machines, document-management systems, and microfilm digitizers all decide what "up" means independently of how the operator placed the original.
| Property | .tiff | .tif |
|---|---|---|
| Format spec | Identical (TIFF 6.0, Adobe 1992) | Identical (TIFF 6.0, Adobe 1992) |
| Origin of extension | Original 4-character extension | DOS / Windows 8.3 filename limit |
| Internal byte content | Byte-for-byte identical | Byte-for-byte identical |
| Renaming between them | Safe — pure rename, no re-encode | Safe — pure rename, no re-encode |
| Tooling that prefers this form | macOS, modern open-source tools, default in Adobe Creative Cloud | Older Windows scanning software, fax tools |
| Multi-page support (in the format) | Yes (sub-file IFDs) | Yes (sub-file IFDs) |
| MIME type | image/tiff | image/tiff |
Treat.tiff and.tif as the same file — this tool accepts both extensions and both produce a TIFF result.
TIFF stores rotation in tag 274 with values 1-8. Many TIFF viewers honor it, many older imaging RIPs and document-management systems do not — which is why rotating the actual pixels and resetting the tag to 1 is the safest fix.
| Value | Meaning | Visual fix needed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Normal (top-left origin) | None — already upright |
| 2 | Mirrored horizontally | Flip horizontal (use Flip TIFF) |
| 3 | Rotated 180 degrees | 180-degree rotate |
| 4 | Mirrored vertically | Flip vertical |
| 5 | Mirrored + rotated 270 CW | Flip + rotate |
| 6 | Rotated 90 CW (camera held portrait, lens on top) | 90-degree CCW rotate |
| 7 | Mirrored + rotated 90 CW | Flip + rotate |
| 8 | Rotated 270 CW (camera held portrait, lens on bottom) | 90-degree CW rotate |
This editor has no compression-type setting; the table explains the TIFF compression types you may meet in source files and in other tools. If the output must use a specific one, run the result through Compress TIFF.
| Compression | Lossless? | Best for | File size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NONE | Yes | Maximum compatibility, archival masters | Largest | Pure uncompressed; required by some legacy software |
| LZW | Yes | General-purpose photo and document scans | Medium | Patents expired 2003-2004; universal support |
| DEFLATE (Zip) | Yes | Smaller archival files | Smaller than LZW | RFC 1951; well supported in modern viewers |
| PACKBITS | Yes | Legacy Mac workflows | Larger than LZW | Simple RLE; older but ubiquitous |
| CCITT Fax 4 | Yes | 1-bit black-and-white documents, faxes | Smallest for bilevel | ITU-T T.6; not for color or grayscale |
| JPEG | No | Photo scans where size matters | Small | Lossy DCT; not for text-heavy documents |
| JP2K (JPEG 2000) | Either | High-quality photo scans, archival | Smaller than JPEG | Wavelet-based; less ubiquitous tool support |
For different transformations or related tasks, see Rotate TIF (3-letter extension), Flip TIFF, Resize TIFF, Crop TIFF, Compress TIFF, or convert with TIFF to PDF, TIFF to JPG, or Merge TIFF to PDF.
No, it doesn't matter. The.tiff and.tif extensions are aliases for the same Tagged Image File Format — the byte content is identical. The 4-letter.tiff is the original extension; the 3-letter.tif came from the DOS / Windows 8.3 filename limitation. This tool accepts either extension for each file you add and outputs TIFF either way (a .tif stays .tif), and renaming a file from one extension to the other is a pure filename change with no re-encode involved.
Not for 8-bit color: exact 90 / 180 / 270 rotations rearrange pixel rows and columns without resampling, and TIFF output is written losslessly. The editor works in 8-bit color, though, so a 16-bit archival scan comes out with 8 bits per channel and a CMYK file comes out as RGB, while a 1-bit fax stays 1-bit; keep the original if you need its exact bit depth. Only custom angles (1.5 degrees, 45 degrees, etc.) require resampling, and even that loss is invisible on print at 300 DPI (TIFF output has no "Quality" setting).
The editor works on the first page of a multi-page TIFF. Downloaded without an edit, the file is your original with every page; once you rotate it, the saved TIFF holds the first page only, and the editor says so as soon as the file opens ("This TIFF has N pages: an edit here keeps only the first page"). To rotate a whole scan job that came out sideways, split the multi-page TIFF first (most TIFF editors and ImageMagick can split with magick convert input.tiff output-%d.tiff), rotate each sub-file, then re-combine.
Scanners write the raw sensor pixels in the platen's native orientation and either set the TIFF Orientation tag (274) to indicate how to display, or just write the pixels in whatever direction the document was placed. Sheet-fed ADFs (auto-document feeders) and flatbeds often disagree about which is "up" — a face-down document fed long-edge-first comes out 180 degrees off; a face-up portrait page fed short-edge-first comes out 90 degrees off. Older scanning software and document-management systems frequently ignore the Orientation tag during indexing or printing, so rotating the actual pixels and resetting the tag to 1 (normal) makes the document display correctly everywhere.
Not reliably. The editor has no compression-type, bit-depth or colour-mode setting: every TIFF it writes uses lossless Deflate compression in 8-bit RGB or RGBA — or 8-bit grey or 1-bit black-and-white when the pixels are. So a CCITT Fax 4 scan stays 1-bit but becomes Deflate, a 16-bit file becomes 8-bit, and a CMYK or LAB file becomes RGB without its ICC profile. Keep an unmodified original, and if the output must use a specific compression, run it through Compress TIFF afterward.
Not by default. Rotating a rectangular image by a non-orthogonal angle (anything other than 0, 90, 180, 270) leaves triangular empty regions at the corners. With the default "Transparent" choice under "Background for exposed corners" they stay transparent, because the editor's TIFF output keeps an alpha channel (RGBA); pick "White" or "Black" for a solid fill, or "Auto-crop corners" to trim them. If you need to remove the empty corners afterwards, rotate first and then crop the result tightly with Crop TIFF, or for document workflows convert the rotated output to PDF with TIFF to PDF and let the page background hide the corner fill.
This tool edits the first page of the input and saves that page only. To rotate a single page, split the multi-page TIFF into individual files first — desktop tools like IrfanView, XnView, or ImageMagick (magick convert input.tiff output-%d.tiff) handle the split — then open only the page that needs rotation, rotate it, and re-merge into a multi-page TIFF afterwards. For PDF-style document workflows where per-page rotation matters more, consider converting to PDF first with TIFF to PDF and rotating in a PDF tool instead.
Usually because the source used a compression the editor does not reproduce: a CCITT Fax 4 scan stays 1-bit but is written with Deflate, which packs bilevel text less tightly, and a JPEG-compressed TIFF comes back lossless. A fine-angle rotation also adds corner fill and new pixel detail. To bring the size back down, save a photo or colour scan as PNG or JPG with "Save as", or run the TIFF through Compress TIFF.
You can rotate it, but not without losing precision: a TIFF edited in your browser is redrawn in 8-bit colour, and the editor has no bit-depth setting. For 16-bit or 32-bit scientific or HDR masters, rotate in a desktop tool that keeps the depth (ImageMagick, Photoshop, GIMP) and keep the original.
Rotating turns the image around its center by an angle (90, 180, 270, or any custom value); a "B" stays a "B". Flipping mirrors across an axis — horizontal flip swaps left and right (a "B" becomes its mirror image), vertical flip swaps top and bottom. A 180-degree rotation produces the same visual result as applying both a horizontal and vertical flip together, but is not the same as either flip alone. For mirroring instead of rotating, use Flip TIFF.