Why do cameras flip images

I probably took about 25 photos and I hated almost every single one. All of a sudden, my nose seemed to be 10 times more crooked than normal, and it was all I could focus on. One major factor is that photos generally show us the reverse of what we see in the mirror. When you take a photo of yourself using some but not all apps or the front-facing camera on an iPhone, the resulting image captures your face as others see it.

The same is true for non-phone cameras. You have that familiarity. Familiarity breeds liking. Different camera lenses can change the way people look in photos. At the end of the day, though, the way we appear in photos is the way we look to the rest of the world. Is my chin that lop-sided? And how come nobody warned me?

Taking purposefully ugly selfies encourages photographers to seize control of their self-image by rejecting beauty standards and embracing the imperfect humanity of our faces. But what about earnest selfies that are just accidentally ugly? Blame your brain instead. Selfies sometimes look strange to their subjects because of how we see ourselves in the mirror, how we perceive our own attractiveness, and the technical details of how we take them on camera phones.

Whether or not a selfie is reversed after being shot is a major factor. Part of that is because our faces are asymmetrical. An episode of the Radiolab podcast, about symmetry, demonstrated this when it flipped a popular photo of Abraham Lincoln. This is of course is bizarre. That said, we as users would like to have mirror selfies and mirror images.

Fortunately, iOS has a setting to do it starting from the iOS 14 version. Note that you need to be at least on iOS 14 to see the option. This app is also capable of resolving the second issue that I listed above. You can flip or unflip photos that are already existing on your iPhone using this app.

To do so use the simple steps below. While there used to be no way to prevent the front-facing iPhone camera from flipping your photos, you can unflip the old selfies later using any of these methods.

Your final photo is no longer mirrored. You can also use the Adobe Photoshop Express app that you can install from this link.