Fixing Photos That Appear Sideways or Upside Down in a PDF
Key points
- The cause is that phones store orientation as metadata
- Fix each photo with "Rotate" before making the PDF
- You can also rotate pages after the PDF is made
Phones record the device's orientation as metadata in each photo. Apps handle this information differently, so a photo can look right in your gallery but sideways elsewhere.
Fix it before making the PDF
- After choosing photos, each one has a "Rotate" button.
- Tap "Rotate" on a wrongly oriented photo until it is upright.
- Check that all photos are upright, then tap "Make PDF".
If you notice it after making the PDF
Open "Rotate & Reorder PDF Pages", rotate each page and save.
Tips for keeping orientation clean
- Hold the phone in the same orientation while shooting a document
- For wide documents such as tables, turn the phone sideways
- Turn on auto-rotate and check the orientation before shooting
After fixing, open the saved PDF once and check every page.
Use "Photos to PDF" (free)
Tools that go well with this
- Compress PDF: Shrink a PDF to fit under a size you choose, for upload limits.
- Rotate & Reorder PDF Pages: Fix sideways pages, change the page order, or remove pages.
- Merge PDFs: Combine several PDF files into one, in the order you choose.