Sometimes a picture faces the wrong way. A selfie shows your parting on the wrong side, a product points out of the page instead of into it, or a design needs its mirror twin. To flip a photo, or any other image, is to swap left and right, so the picture comes out as its own reflection: a mirror image.
This page opens the Rotate & flip tool with Mirror left to right switched on and the Turn set to No turn, so one press of Rotate gives you a mirror image. It is free, it runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded. Read on for when a mirror is the right fix, how it differs from a turn, and how to flip a whole set of pictures.
How to mirror an image, left to right
- Press Select images, or drop one or more pictures onto the page.
- Look at the stage: the picture already shows mirrored, because Mirror left to right is on.
- Leave Turn at No turn, or add a quarter turn if the picture is also on its side.
- Keep Save as on Original, or pick JPG, PNG or WebP.
- Press Rotate, then save the picture. Its name ends in _rotated.
The letter F between the Turn buttons shows the result in miniature. With the mirror on, it reads backwards, and so will any writing in your picture. The panel says it too, under Mirror left to right: Writing in the picture will read backwards.
If the picture is also lying on its side, set a Turn as well. The tool turns first and mirrors after, and the stage and the F show the combined result, so you can press Turn left or Turn right until it looks right before you press Rotate.
A mirror does not change the size. A 3000 × 2000 picture comes out 3000 × 2000, and the Result line in the panel shows it. Nothing is cropped and nothing is added.
When you need a mirror image
To flip an image horizontally is a small change with a lot of uses. These are the common reasons to flip a photo:
- Reverse a selfie. Some phones save front-camera photos mirrored and some do not, so a selfie may not match what you saw on the screen. Mirroring it puts it back.
- Turn a subject to face into the page. In a layout, a person or a product facing the text tends to look better than one facing away.
- Make a matching pair. A mirrored copy of an arrow, a wing or a border piece gives you the other side.
- Print transfers. Iron-on transfer paper often needs the design printed as a mirror image, so it reads the right way once pressed. Check your paper's instructions.
- Check a drawing. Artists flip a sketch to spot faces and buildings that lean the wrong way; the fresh view makes the mistakes stand out.
- Fix a scan made from the wrong side. A slide, a negative or a sheet of tracing paper scanned face down comes out reversed, and a mirror puts it right.
A mirrored selfie may be headed for a profile picture or a post. For a round avatar, circle crop the image next. For a square post, you can crop the picture to a square, which cuts away the edges, or make the image square by adding space around it, so nothing is cut off. If the selfie came out dark, brighten the image as well.
Flip, mirror or rotate: which one you want
When people say flip a picture, they can mean more than one thing, so it helps to be exact. The Rotate & flip tool has a control for each.
| What you set | What happens | Writing in the picture |
|---|---|---|
| Mirror left to right (this page) | Left and right swap, like a mirror | Reads backwards |
| Flip upside down | Top and bottom swap, like a reflection in water | Upside down and mirrored |
| Turn: Upside down | The picture turns half a circle | Upside down, not mirrored |
| Both mirrors on | The same as turning upside down | Upside down, not mirrored |
If a picture is only lying on its side, you do not want a mirror at all: you want a turn. Use Rotate & flip image and pick 90° clockwise or 90° anticlockwise. To flip top to bottom instead, the flip image vertically page starts with Flip upside down switched on. Straighten is on this page too, for a picture that is slightly tilted as well as reversed.
Some people say invert when they mean mirror. Inverting is a change of colour, not of direction: to invert photo colours is to make a negative, where black becomes white and every colour turns to its opposite, and nothing moves.
Mirror a photo set in one go
Select up to 100 pictures to mirror them all. Each one is flipped the same way, the button counts them (Rotate 15 pictures), and Save all as ZIP saves the results together. A file that cannot be opened says Can’t open on its card and is skipped.
Save as Original keeps a JPG as a JPG and a PNG as a PNG; an iPhone HEIC photo becomes a JPG, and a GIF, BMP or TIFF becomes a PNG. Mirroring moves pixels without changing them, but a JPG is saved again, at high quality, so the change is very hard to see. PNG keeps every pixel of the mirrored picture exactly.
A transparent PNG or WebP stays transparent when you save it as PNG or WebP. Saved as JPG, the transparent parts become white.
On the done screen, each row shows a small preview of the mirrored picture. If one should not have been flipped, save the others one by one with their own Save button instead of the ZIP. Change settings takes you back to the panel with everything kept.
Private, free and in your browser
The picture is opened and mirrored inside this browser tab. It is never uploaded, and our server does no picture work, so there is nothing to delete afterwards. The saved picture is drawn fresh, with no location, camera or date details, and a sideways phone photo comes out the right way up.
- Free, with no account and no watermark.
- Image tools are not counted in the daily limit, which applies to document conversions only.
- Works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Very large pictures may be too big for your browser.
- Mirroring a clip instead? Mirror video, in the video tools, does the same for video, also in your browser.
Flip your image now
To flip a photo left to right, open it here and press Rotate: Mirror left to right is already on. Add a turn if it is also on its side, and choose PNG to keep every pixel.
It is free and private, and nothing leaves your device. Select your pictures above to make a mirror image.
