How to Rotate Selection in Paint.NET

Matthew November 23, 2018

Paint.NET is a very powerful freeware software package for image editing and manipulation. Like most modern image editing programs, it includes layering functionality that lets you work with different layers on your images. When working with layers, one tool that can come in very handy is Move Selected Pixels. This tool is very useful in rotating a selection within your image file. In this article I will show you a brief and basic tutorial in rotating a selection in Paint.NET.

Open the Paint.NET software and a select an image to edit. Then click Tool and Rectangle Select. Move the cursor over the image and hold the left mouse button to drag and expand a rectangle as shown below.

rotate image

Click Tools and select Move Selected Pixels from the menu. Now you can move the selected area with rectangle by dragging it with cursor as shown below.

To rotate the selected area, move the cursor outside the rectangle. A curved arrow appears as in the snapshot below. Hold the left mouse button and move cursor to rotate the selected area.

Rotating a selected area in a single layer leaves a blank background behind it as in the shots above. So this is not really ideal if you rotate text added to the picture in the same layer. However, you can rotate text added to a second layer without having any impact on the image. Click Layers > Add New Layer, and then enter some text by selecting Tools > Text.

Now select the text with Rectangle Select, and rotate it with the Move Selected Pixels option. Then it rotates without having any impact on the background image. You can always switch between layers by pressing F7. The snapshot below includes text rotated on the same image layer and on a separate foreground layer.

So it’s easy to see how you can now add and rotate image text without ruining the picture’s background. You can also rotate any other area of a foreground image over a background layer much the same. However, you might need to cut out an area from a picture first by removing its backdrop as covered in this Tech Junkie guide.

When you’ve done that, click Layers > Import From File; and open the image you erased some background from. It will then open in a second layer above a background picture as shown below. Note that Move Selected Pixels is automatically selected when it opens. Now rotate the top image over the background with that tool.

So the Move Selected Pixels tool can come in handy when you apply it with layers. With it you can now rotate and move one layer over a background image, which is great for adjusting text layout.