A method and apparatus utilizes a three dimensional rendering engine to rotate an image based on user selected or otherwise determined screen orientation. A vertex coordinate transformation is defined for a rotated destination image. The source image is used as a texture for texture mapping during rendering operation to produce rotated image. In one embodiment, a separate set of software instructions is used for each orientation mode. Accordingly, a non-pixel by pixel based 3D rotation may be carried out using a 3D rendering engine to avoid a single parameter based seriatim pixel by pixel based orientation.