How to Rotate an Image in Google Slides

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If you’ve ever added a picture from a smartphone or a digital camera to a document, then you may have experienced an issue with its rotation.

This could even be a very old picture that you have looked at many times on your phone or computer but never noticed that the image was facing the wrong way. Then when you try to place it in a slideshow, you need to know image rotation steps or how to flip an image on Google Slides.

While you can take a picture in portrait or landscape with your camera, it may not have that same rotation when you add it to an application like Google Slides.

Fortunately, Google Slides has some image formatting and editing tools, and one of those tools allows you to turn pictures that you have added to a slide.

The solution for how to flip image in Google Slides is to open the slideshow, select the slide, click the picture, choose Arrange, select Rotate, then the desired adjustment.

Now the image that you chose should be rotated or flipped in the manner that you wanted, or should at least be making progress to the desired orientation. If it’s not quite there, then you may need to make a another rotation adjustment.

Our guide below will show you how to rotate an image in Google Slides and provide additional information on how to flip image on Google Slides slideshows.

Contents hide
1 How to Rotate a Picture in Google Slides
2 How to Rotate Images in Google Slides
3 More Information on Google Slides Image Flipping and Rotation
4 Additional reading

How to Rotate a Picture in Google Slides

  1. Open the Google Slides file.
  2. Choose the slide with the picture.
  3. Click the picture to select it.
  4. Choose Arrange at the top of the window.
  5. Click Rotate, then select the desired rotation.

Our article continues below with additional information on how to flip an image in Google Slides, as well as pictures for these steps.

We also discuss a couple of other ways that you can rotate images in Google Slides.

How to Rotate Images in Google Slides

The steps in this article were performed in the desktop version of the Google Chrome Web browser but will also work in other desktop browsers like Safari or Firefox.

Step 1: Sign into Google Drive and open the Slides presentation containing the image to rotate.

Step 2: Choose the slide with the picture from the column at the left side of the window.

click the slide with the image

Step 3: Click on the picture you want to rotate.

Note that you can do other things to a selected picture, too, such as adding a hyperlink.

click the picture to select it

Step 4: Select the Arrange tab from the menu at the top of the window.

select the Arrange tab

Step 5: Choose the Rotate option, then select the type of rotation to apply to the image.

how to rotate an image in Google Slides

Rotation options include rotating 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise, flipping vertically, or flipping horizontally.

If you have a Powerpoint file and would like to edit a picture in Slides, then you can simply convert between the two applications.

Our tutorial continues below with more information on images in Google Slides, as well as additional discussion about the question of “how do you flip an image on Google Slides?”

More Information on Google Slides Image Flipping and Rotation

As discussed earlier, there are some other ways to rotate pictures in Google Slides as well.

After you have clicked on the picture to select it you will see a circular handle on the outside of the picture. If you click and drag that handle you can rotate the image. This freeform rotation option can be a little more helpful if one of the default rotation options doesn’t meet your needs.

Another way to rotate images in Google Slides is to click on the picture to select it, then click the Format options in the toolbar. This will add a column to the right side of the window, where one of the options is Size & Rotation. If you click that option you will be able to use the available rotation options on that menu.

While “rotate” and “flip” may seem interchangeable, you will notice some subtle yet important differences if you apply both of them to the same image.

Rotating an image will basically turn the picture. If you think of it like a painting or physical image in front of you, then it’s just like spinning that picture.

Flipping an image is going to rotate it along a horizontal or vertical axis. This is most noticeable if the image has words in it, because they are going to have a mirror effect to them.

Additional reading