Invert
Negative / invert colors.
This runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
About Invert
Turns an image into its negative by subtracting every colour value from 255 — a one-click, exactly reversible operation that runs entirely in your browser.
The honest uses for inversion are narrower than the tool's popularity suggests: turning a scanned film negative into something you can actually look at, producing a dark-background version of a line diagram or a screenshot of text, and checking a design for contrast problems by viewing it flipped. There are no settings and one button.
Every red, green and blue value is subtracted from 255, so 0 becomes 255, 200 becomes 55, and mid-grey stays roughly where it was. The alpha channel is left as it is. Because this is pure subtraction with nothing rounded away, applying it a second time returns the exact original — one of very few image operations that is genuinely reversible.
Inverting a scanned colour negative gets you most of the way and not all of it. Colour negative film sits on an orange base, and flipping it leaves a strong blue-cyan cast that still needs levels or a temperature shift to clear. Black-and-white negatives don't carry that problem. Inverting an ordinary photograph to make a dark-mode asset rarely works, because faces go grey-green.
How to use Invert
- 1Drop an image onto the panel or click to select one.
- 2Click Apply preview to see the negative.
- 3Click Download to save it.
What it won't do
- No partial or masked inversion; the whole frame flips together.
- Inverted colour negatives still carry a cast from the film's orange base.
- Alpha is preserved rather than inverted, which suits most uses but not all.
Common questions
Does inverting an image lose quality?
No. Subtracting each value from 255 maps every possible input to a distinct output, so no information is lost and nothing is rounded off. Run the result through again and you get the original back exactly. The file you download is a PNG, which is lossless, so that round trip holds all the way through.
How do I turn a scanned film negative into a normal photo?
Invert it first, then correct the colour. A colour negative's orange base inverts to a blue cast that the flip alone won't remove, so follow with the levels tool to set black and white points and the white balance tool to take out what's left. Black-and-white negatives usually need nothing beyond the invert.
Does invert affect transparent areas?
The colours invert, the transparency doesn't. A fully transparent pixel stays fully transparent and a half-opaque one stays half-opaque; only red, green and blue flip. A transparent PNG therefore comes back with the same silhouette and different colours, which is generally what you want for a dark-mode icon.
Why do people look green in an inverted photo?
Skin is dominated by red, and the inverse of red is cyan. Every hue maps to its opposite on the colour wheel, so warm tones become cool ones and faces end up a greenish blue. Nothing has gone wrong — that's what a negative looks like. Converting to grayscale first avoids it when you only want the tonal flip.
Related tools
Why this one doesn't upload your file
There is no server to upload to. This page is a static file, and the work happens in your browser using the same graphics and WebAssembly code that renders every other site you visit. Your file is read from disk into memory, processed, and handed back as a download. Once the page has loaded you can disconnect from the network entirely and it keeps working. The longer explanation