Inverting a picture swaps every colour for its opposite. Black becomes white, white becomes black, and blue turns yellow, so a photo looks like the negative from an old roll of film. It is a striking effect, and it has practical uses too.
This page opens Adjust image colour with the Filter set to Invert, so you can invert image colours with one press. The stage shows the result before you save, it is free, and the picture never leaves your browser. Below: what inverting does to each colour, what a negative image is good for, and one surprise when you combine it with the sliders.
How to invert image colours
- Press Select images, or drop one or more pictures onto the page. JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, BMP, TIFF, ICO and iPhone HEIC photos all open.
- Check the stage: the picture is already inverted, because the Filter is set to Invert.
- Press and hold Hold to compare, or hold Space, to flick back to the original. Split view shows both halves at once.
- Leave Save as on Original, or pick JPG, PNG or WebP.
- Press Apply colour and save. The name ends in _inverted when only the Filter was used.
Invert is also one of the Quick looks, next to Black & white and Sepia, so it is one click away if you have tried something else. Reset clears the Filter as well as the sliders, and the note under the button then asks you to move a slider or pick a look before it will save.
What inverting does to each colour
Every pixel is made of red, green and blue, each from 0 to 255. Inverting replaces each value with 255 minus itself. A value of 0 becomes 255, 200 becomes 55, and the middle stays near the middle. That is why mid grey hardly changes while black and white swap places.
| Colour | Becomes |
|---|---|
| Black | White |
| White | Black |
| Red | Cyan, a light blue-green |
| Green | Magenta, a pink-purple |
| Blue | Yellow |
| Mid grey | Mid grey, almost unchanged |
Two more examples show the pattern. A warm orange of 255, 140 and 0 becomes 0, 115 and 255, a strong blue. A soft pastel pink of 255, 200 and 210 becomes 0, 55 and 45, a very dark teal. Light colours turn dark and dark colours turn light, whatever their hue.
Skin tones turn blue-green and blue skies turn a dark orange-brown, which is what gives a photo negative its strange look. Invert the result a second time and the original colours come back, most closely when you save both runs as PNG. Transparent parts of a PNG stay transparent; only the colours flip.
When a negative image is useful
- Invert a screenshot of a dark app. Light text on a dark background becomes dark text on a light one, which prints with far less ink. Coloured icons and highlights change too, so check them.
- Make a striking design. A negative image of a portrait, a city skyline or a plant makes an eye-catching poster or cover.
- Look at a black and white film negative. A scan of one turned positive gives you a quick view of the photo. Colour negatives have an orange base, so inverting one leaves a strong colour cast.
- Read faint marks. Inverting a pale pencil sketch or a faded stamp can make thin lines easier to see.
- Swap a logo's colours. A white icon on black becomes a black icon on white, ready for a light page.
- See a design afresh. Looking at a layout in opposite colours makes you notice its shapes and balance instead of its colours, a trick some designers use to check their work.
The sliders work in reverse with Invert
The Filter is applied after Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Warmth. With Invert on, that turns two of them around. Raising Brightness makes the picture lighter before it is inverted, so the result on the stage gets darker. Moving Warmth towards Warmer adds red before the flip, so the negative turns cooler and bluer.
Contrast and Saturation behave as you expect, because a negative with more contrast is still a negative with more contrast. So if the inverted picture is too dark, lower Brightness instead of raising it, and if it is too blue, move Warmth towards Cooler. Hold to compare and Split view show the original at any time, so it is easy to see where you are.
To make a clean dark-on-light page from a screenshot, a good mix is Invert with a little extra Contrast. Text then reads crisply, and a dark grey background ends up close to white.
Invert several pictures, privately
Select up to 100 pictures and they are all inverted the same way. The button reads Apply to 5 pictures, a file that cannot be opened says Can’t open on its card and is skipped, and Save all as ZIP saves the results together.
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. JPG and WebP are saved again at high quality, and PNG keeps every pixel of the inverted picture.
- It runs in your browser. The picture is never uploaded, and our server does no picture work.
- It is free, with no account and no watermark. Image tools are not counted in the free daily limit, which applies to document conversions only.
- The saved picture is drawn fresh, so it carries no location, camera or date details.
- It works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Very large pictures may be too big for your browser.
For other changes to the same picture, try pixelate image to hide a part, flip photo to mirror it, circle crop image for a round avatar, or make image square for a square post.
Make your negative now
Open a picture above: the Filter is already Invert. Check it with Hold to compare, remember that Brightness works in reverse, and press Apply colour to invert image colours and save the result.
It is free and private. For greys instead of opposites, try black and white.
