How to mirror photos and add reflections to photos
You’re in luck if you want to mirror your photos, add reflection effects, or flip your photos upside down or horizontally—there’s an app for that! Here are the best apps for iPhone and Android to mirror photos.
iOS (iPhone/iPad) Apps
Photo Mirror Effects – Reflection Editor
Available from the App Store for iPhone/iPad (Free, ad-enabled, in app purchases)
A simple photo mirroring app that allows you to mirror your photos horizontally or vertically. Additional features include mirroring photos inside a shape, stickers, adding text, distorted mirroring and more.
Many of the frames require you to purchase or watch an ad to unlock the ability to use them. Some of the effects take a long time to render. Otherwise, a great app, especially considering that it’s free.
Split Pic Collage Maker Layout
Available from the App Store for iPhone/iPad (Free, Watermarked, Ad-Enabled, In-App Purchases)
A highly popular app that allows you to do more than just flip and mirror photos. You can choose from many frames and then apply effects to the individual frames. Since you can drag the individual photos within a frame, it does require some manual adjustment to get a perfect mirror effect. Photo effects available include:
To remove the watermark from photos costs $0.99. Other in-app purchases are available.
Other iPhone/iPad photo mirroring apps
- Mirror Photo Editor with Effects Split & Blend Pic (Free): lots of different mirror effects, photo repeating effects, filters and frames. Great for a free app.
- Kaleidoscope Camera for Instagram (Free, In-App Purchases): a camera effect app with various mirroring and kaleidoscopic effects.
Android Apps
Mirror Lab
Available on Google Play for Android phones (Free, In-App Purchases)
Mirror Lab is an excellent mirroring effects app that allows you to do much more than mirror photos. The app features a range of distorting, mirroring and fractal effects. Highly recommended.
Collage Photo Mirror & Face Live Camera
Available on Google Play for Android phones (Free, In-App Purchases)
Mirror photos up to four times using Collage Photo Mirror & Face Live Camera. Choose from numerous photo effects, stitch multiple photos together and more using this feature-packed app. Highly popular on the Google Play store.
Origin of mirrored photos
Mirrored photos first came to popularity when Instagram photos were all square. People wanting to share a portrait photo would either:
- choose between adding ugly black/white bars to the left and right of the photo to fill in the empty space (also known as letterboxing); or
- crop the photo to a square shape, often leaving out important parts of their photo
Mirroring photos allowed the subject to occupy the full area of the canvas while conforming to the constraint of Instagram’s square photos.
Now that Instagram users can post photos of any ratio, mirroring and repeating photos is mostly a stylistic choice.
Types of mirroring
Many apps offer different types of mirroring effects, including:
- Vertical photo mirror: split photo down middle with vertical mirror
- Horizontal photo mirror: split photo across the middle with a horizontal mirror
- Split color mirror: Photo with one side black and white while the other is in colour
- Upside down mirror: mirror photo but flip one side upside down
- Kaleidoscope: make a kaleidoscope effect with from a photo using mirrors
- Non-mirrored repeating photo: repeat the photo in a grid without mirroring
- Flip photo: flip the entire photo without any mirroring
- Fake reflection: make a fake water reflection (sometimes with a distorted or rippled reflection)
App suggestions
Do you know of any great mirroring photo apps? Let us know in the comments below.
