Free Image Color Inverter
Invert the colors of an image in your browser, either as a full negative or with the colors kept and only light and dark flipped, which is the one that turns a screenshot or a chart dark without recoloring it.
Drop an image here
or paste with Ctrl+V. JPG, PNG or WebP.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your images are never uploaded to a server.
How it works
- Drop an image onto the box above, paste one with Ctrl+V, or choose a file.
- It inverts straight away as a negative, which is what most people mean by inverting.
- Switch to keeping the colors if it is a screenshot, a chart or a scanned page: light and dark swap, but a blue line stays blue.
- Hold the original up against it at any point to check what actually changed.
- Choose a format, name the file and download it at full resolution.
Common use cases
- Turning a white-background diagram or chart dark, so it stops glaring out of a dark slide.
- Reading a photograph of a film negative, where inverting is the only way to see what the picture is.
- Making a black logo into a white one for a dark header, keeping the transparent background transparent.
- Recovering a scanned page that came back as white text on black.
- Checking a design for contrast problems, which a negative makes obvious immediately.
Frequently asked questions
- What does inverting an image actually do?
- It replaces every color with its opposite. Black becomes white, white becomes black, and each shade in between swaps to the same distance the other side of the middle. On a photograph the result is a film negative, which is exactly what a negative is: film records the opposite of what it sees, and printing it flips it back.
- Why did inverting my screenshot turn everything the wrong color?
- Because a full negative flips color as well as brightness, and blue is the opposite of orange. So a chart with a blue line on a white background comes back as an orange line on black, and nothing about it is recognizable any more. That is correct behavior for a negative and wrong for a document, which is why this tool has a second mode. Choose 'Keep the colors' and only light and dark swap: the background goes black, the text goes white, and the blue line is still blue.
- Why does keeping the colors leave some things unchanged?
- Because that mode flips how light a pixel is, and a strongly saturated color is already exactly halfway. A pure blue sits in the middle of the light-to-dark range, so flipping it gives back the same blue. It looks like nothing happened to it, and that is the intention: the white behind it turns black, the black text turns white, and the colors you chose deliberately are left where they were.
- Can I invert a photo of a film negative to see the real picture?
- Yes, and a black and white negative comes out properly. Use the negative mode and it reads as the photograph it was. Color negatives are harder, because color film is made on an orange base that stays orange after inverting, so the result comes back with a strong blue cast. It is recognizable and it is not finished; correcting it needs a white balance pass afterward.
- Does inverting reduce the quality of the image?
- No. Every pixel is replaced by an exact arithmetic opposite, nothing is blurred, resized or thrown away, and inverting twice returns the original. The only thing that can cost quality is the format you save to: saving as JPG re-compresses the picture, and saving a transparent PNG as JPG fills the transparent parts with a solid color.
- Is my image uploaded anywhere?
- No. The file is read by your own browser and the inversion runs on your machine, which is why it is instant even on a large photo and why it works with your connection off. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and there is no signup or watermark.