Image Flip and Mirror Tool
Mirror an image left to right, top to bottom, or both, without uploading it anywhere.
Ignored for PNG, which is always lossless.
Drop an image here
or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. Nothing is uploaded.
Everything here runs on your device. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.
Mirroring an image is one of those operations that sounds too simple to need a tool, right up until you try it on a phone photo and the result comes out upside down. This flips the image you are actually looking at, on whichever axis you pick, and hands it back in the format you want.
How to use it
- Drop an image onto the panel, press Choose image, or paste a screenshot directly from your clipboard.
- Pick an axis. Horizontal mirrors left to right, Vertical mirrors top to bottom, and Both does the two together.
- Choose an output format. Formats your browser cannot write are shown disabled with the reason, rather than silently producing something else.
- Press Download. If you selected several files, use the batch button and you get a ZIP.
A mirror is not a rotation
These two get conflated constantly, and the difference is worth understanding because reaching for the wrong one wastes time.
A rotation turns the image around its centre. A flip reflects it across a line. The giveaway is text: rotate a photo of a sign and the text stays readable, just sideways. Flip it and the text reads backwards. That is not a cosmetic difference — mirroring reverses the handedness of the image, and no amount of rotating can undo it. You need another flip.
There is exactly one case where they overlap. Flipping horizontally and vertically at the same time produces the identical result to rotating 180 degrees. If that is what you want, the rotator does it slightly better, because a quarter turn moves pixels without resampling them at all. This tool tells you so when you pick both axes, rather than letting you find out later.
The most common real use for a horizontal flip is undoing a selfie. Front-facing cameras mirror the preview so it behaves like a bathroom mirror, and some save the mirrored version. Any text in the shot comes out backwards, and one horizontal flip fixes it.
The orientation tag problem
This is where most online flip tools quietly get it wrong.
When you take a photo in portrait, most phones do not rotate the pixels. They store the image exactly as the sensor read it — usually landscape — and attach a small EXIF orientation tag that says “rotate this 90 degrees clockwise before showing it”. Every photo viewer reads that tag, which is why your photos look upright everywhere.
A tool that loads the raw pixels and flips them is flipping the sensor data, not the photograph. If the orientation tag says the image needs a quarter turn, then a horizontal flip applied before that turn lands as a vertical flip after it. The output is mirrored on the axis you did not choose, and it looks like the tool is broken.
The fix is ordering: apply the orientation correction first, then the flip on top. That is what happens here, which is why the preview and the downloaded file agree. When a photo carries an orientation tag, the status line says it was rotated upright, because silence there reads as a bug.
What it does not do
There is no partial flip and no animation — a mirror is all or nothing. It will not mirror one half of an image against the other to make a symmetry effect, which is a different tool. Very large images are capped at the browser’s canvas limit, and you will be told if that happens rather than handed a truncated file.
Nothing is uploaded. The flip runs on your device, and the file never leaves it.
Which axis you probably want
| Situation | Axis | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Undoing a mirrored selfie | Horizontal | Front cameras mirror the preview, reversing any text |
| Making a subject face the other way | Horizontal | Standard practice in layout and design work |
| A scan that came out upside down | Both | Equivalent to 180 degrees, and the rotator is better for it |
| A reflection effect below an object | Vertical | Mirrors top to bottom, as water would |
| Fixing a sideways photo | Neither | That is a rotation — use the rotator instead |
Questions
What is the difference between flipping and rotating an image?
A flip mirrors the image, and a rotation turns it. They are genuinely different operations — no rotation can reproduce a mirror, because mirroring reverses handedness. Text becomes backwards when you flip and stays readable when you rotate. The one exception is flipping both axes at once, which does give exactly the same result as a 180 degree rotation.
Why does my flipped photo look different from the thumbnail in my file manager?
Most phone cameras store the photo the way the sensor read it and attach an orientation tag telling software how to turn it upright. Tools that ignore that tag flip the raw sensor data instead of the image you were looking at, so the result comes out mirrored on the wrong axis. This tool applies the orientation first and then the flip, which is why the preview matches what saves.
Does flipping an image reduce its quality?
The mirroring itself is exact — every pixel moves to a new position without being blended or interpolated, so no detail is lost. What can cost quality is the re-encode afterwards. Saving a JPEG as a JPEG compresses it a second time, so keep the quality high, or use PNG or WebP if you plan to edit the file again later.
Can I flip several images at once?
Yes. Select multiple files when you add them and a batch button appears. Every file is flipped on the same axis and converted to the same format, then handed back as a single ZIP. Everything is processed in your browser, so a large batch is limited by your device rather than by an upload allowance.
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