100% in your browser — files never uploaded
What color inversion does
Each channel of every pixel is flipped to its opposite: black becomes white, blue becomes orange, dark becomes light. The result is a photographic negative of your image — or a positive, if what you dropped was already a negative. Invert flips colors, not the image — to mirror an image, use our Flip Image tool.
Recovering photos from scanned film negatives
Flatbed-scanned film negatives come out inverted. Running the scan through this tool flips them back to a viewable positive instantly. Color negatives will still carry the amber film-base tint after inversion, but the image becomes recognizable and shareable.
Runs on your device
The inversion is a pure pixel operation on the Canvas API in your browser — nothing is uploaded, and the full-resolution PNG downloads straight from memory.
Create a Negative or Rescue One — Instantly, Privately
Color inversion has two audiences: people making a negative on purpose — for artistic effect, X-ray-style visuals, or checking how a design reads in reverse video — and people rescuing one, usually a flatbed scan of old film that arrived inverted. Both are one drop away here: the tool remaps every pixel to its exact mathematical opposite and hands back a full-resolution PNG, with nothing uploaded anywhere.
A Designer's Reverse-Video Check
Inverting a UI screenshot approximates how the layout might feel in a crude dark mode and instantly exposes elements that rely on pure white backgrounds — baked-in white boxes around logos being the classic offender. It's also a quick accessibility gut-check: if text becomes unreadable when inverted, its contrast was probably carried by hue rather than luminance, which is fragile for low-vision users running system-level color inversion.
Film Negatives: What Inversion Can and Can't Fix
For black-and-white negatives, inversion alone produces a finished positive. Color negative film adds an orange mask that becomes a cold blue cast after inversion — a full correction needs color-balance work in an editor, but the inverted image is immediately viewable, dateable and shareable, which is usually what a box of inherited negatives actually needs. Scan at your scanner's highest resolution first; you can always downsize with the Image Resizer afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
Does inverting twice restore the original?
Yes — inversion is perfectly reversible. Running the output through the tool again returns the exact original pixels.
Why does my inverted color negative look orange or blue?
Color negative film has an orange base mask. Inverting flips it to a blue cast — that's inherent to the film, not an error. Black-and-white negatives invert cleanly.
Is quality lost during inversion?
No — every pixel is remapped exactly, and the output is a lossless PNG at the original resolution.
Is the image uploaded to a server?
No. The entire operation happens in your browser; the tool works even offline once the page is loaded.