Your webcam, in negative
The inverted camera online flips every colour your camera sees to its opposite. Skin turns blue-green, dark hair turns pale, a bright window becomes a black rectangle. It’s eerie, a little like an X-ray, and surprisingly fun. The camera above starts with the Invert filter on. Press Start camera, then Space to take a photo or R to record video.
How inverting works
Every pixel has red, green and blue values from 0 to 255. Inverting replaces each value with 255 minus itself, so black (0) becomes white (255) and the colours swap with their complements: red becomes cyan, green becomes magenta, blue becomes yellow. Because the maths is so simple, the effect runs smoothly even on older laptops and phones.
Fun and useful things to try
- Preview old film negatives. Hold a negative strip in front of a white screen and see the positive image. It’s handy for deciding which ones to get properly scanned.
- X-ray style portraits. Turn Saturation down to 0% in the Adjust tab and boost Contrast.
- Halloween and horror clips that feel instantly “wrong” in the best way.
- Check your lighting. Hotspots on your face show up as dark patches when inverted.
- Art practice. Inverting a reference helps you see shapes and values instead of “a face”.
Read more ideas in our post on the inverted camera effect.
Inverted vs. reversed
People sometimes say “inverted” when they mean a flipped, mirror-image camera. That’s a different thing: press M to reverse the preview left to right. We explain why webcams are mirrored in a separate guide.
Free and private
There’s no sign-up and no watermark, and nothing is uploaded. The effect is applied locally in your browser, and your photos stay on your device.