Image Flipper

Flip or rotate?

The two are easy to confuse. A flip is a reflection, like looking at the picture in a mirror, so text comes out backwards. A rotation turns the picture around its centre, so text stays readable, just sideways or upside down.

Running a horizontal flip and then a vertical flip gives the same picture as a single 180° rotation. The image rotator does that in one pass, which matters for JPG because every pass re-encodes the file. Here, "horizontal" means the mirror people usually picture: the left edge becomes the right edge. Some software names the two directions the other way round; the labels here describe what you will see.

What happens to quality

The picture is decoded, mirrored and saved again in its own format, so the result depends on the format:

• JPG is saved again at quality 85, with colour detail stored at half resolution (4:2:0). This is not a lossless flip, and every run adds one more re-encode. A generated 1200 × 800 JPG saved at quality 95 went from 397.4 KB to 187.2 KB after a horizontal flip.
• PNG stays exact. In our test of a transparent logo with a soft shadow, every alpha value and every visible colour matched the mirrored original. The file size still changed, from 7.1 KB to 8.0 KB.
• WebP is saved again as lossy WebP at quality 85, even when the source was lossless, and transparency is kept. A lossless transparent WebP of 2.9 KB came back as 7.1 KB, and a quality 90 photo-like WebP went from 256.7 KB to 189.9 KB.

Generated locally; not a benchmark; not a guaranteed result. If a file must not lose any quality, flip a PNG, or flip the original in software that rewrites JPG data without re-encoding.

Phone photos and the rotation flag

A phone usually stores a photo's pixels in one fixed direction and records an EXIF "orientation" flag that tells viewers how to turn it for display. This tool reads that flag when it opens a JPG, turns the pixels to match, and only then flips. The result has upright pixels and no flag. We tested this with JPGs stored at 600 × 400, carrying rotation flags 3, 6 and 8, with a red block in one corner. For flag 6, a viewer showed the red block at the top right. After a horizontal flip it appeared at the top left, and the file was 400 × 600 with no flag, exactly what a mirror of the viewed picture looks like.

The flag is applied to JPG files only. A PNG or WebP that carries an orientation flag has the flag dropped without being applied, so its pixels come back in their stored direction. EXIF, GPS and colour-profile data are removed from every format. If you want metadata gone without re-encoding the picture, use the Image Metadata Remover, and see the JPG vs PNG vs WebP guide if you are unsure which format to keep.

Animated and unsupported files

Only JPG, PNG and WebP are accepted. GIF is not. An animated WebP is rejected with a "could not be decoded" error. An animated PNG is accepted, but only its first frame is flipped and returned, with no warning, so the animation is lost.

Accepts JPG/JPEG, PNG and WebP (static). Output is the same format as the input. GIF and animated WebP are not supported, and an animated PNG returns its first frame only. Limits: 20 MB per file, 12,000 px per side and 40 megapixels. One file is flipped at a time.

1. Choose a JPG, PNG or WebP (up to 20 MB).
2. Pick "Flip Horizontal" (left and right swap) or "Flip Vertical" (top and bottom swap). A direction must be chosen before the button works.
3. Click "Flip Image" and download the result, named after your original with "-flipped" added.

• Mirroring a photo so the subject faces the other way in a layout
• Reversing a picture that was captured mirrored
• Preparing artwork for a transfer or print that needs a mirrored original
• Making a symmetrical or reflected graphic from one source image

One flip is applied per run. JPG and WebP are re-encoded at quality 85 and cannot be flipped losslessly here, and a lossless WebP is saved as lossy. A stored rotation flag is applied to JPG files only. EXIF, GPS and embedded colour profiles are removed. Animated PNG files lose every frame after the first, and GIF is not accepted.