How to mirror the front camera on iPhone - iOS 16
How to make the picture taken with your iPhone front camera looks as displayed before it was taken, and other things you should be aware of.
To mirror the pictures taken with the front camera on iPhones:
- Open the Settings app
- Tap on Camera to open the camera settings
- Enable “Mirror Front Camera” in the Composition group.
Now, the pictures you will take with your iPhone front camera will look the way there are displayed before you take the picture, they won’t be flipped anymore.
But, even if you think that you are looking bad after your iPhone mirrored your selfies, you should not enable this setting.
What does Mirror Front Camera mean on iPhones
Mirror Front Camera is a setting that can be enabled or disabled in Settings > Camera > Composition, among other settings specific to how the camera app should behave on iPhones.
This Mirror Front Camera setting allows you to mirror, or vertically flip, the picture taken with the front camera, such as selfies.
If enabled, the picture will be vertically flipped after it’s taken. Therefore, it will look the same as when the iPhone screen displays the camera output before you take the photo.
If Mirror Front Camera is disabled, a flip will be applied to the taken photo, the photo won’t look like what is appearing on your iPhone screen with the front camera selected on the camera app.
Why does the iPhone camera flip the picture by default
iPhones flip pictures taken with the front camera by default, it might be annoying for you but there is a specific reason why it’s like that.
The iPhone camera flips the picture on the front camera to reflect better how the reality is. Indeed, when you take a picture of an object with the front camera, the object displayed on the screen won’t exactly look like the real object.
The worst case is text, if you look at a text using the front camera on your iPhone, you won’t be able to read it. By flipping the picture, your iPhone makes the picture reflect better reality, and the text becomes readable.
Another choice could be to apply the flipping effect directly on the screen displayed before you take the picture, but in this case, it would be way harder to take a picture. By moving to the left, the display would move to the right, adding more confusion for iPhone users.
All of this has been added by Apple to improve user experience on iPhones.
Why do you look bad on iPhone front camera?
It also happens to me, every time I look at myself using the front camera on my iPhone, I feel like I look good, but once I take the picture, I look really bad.
The reason why everybody feels this is because we are not used to seeing ourselves like that. Every time we are looking at ourselves is either in a mirror or while taking a selfie.
In both cases, the reflection of ourselves is flipped, your right hand seems to be your left hand in the mirror, and everything is vertically flipped. That’s not how we look, but that’s how we are used to seeing ourselves.
As iPhones are mirroring the picture taken with the front camera, our selfies are not like how we are used to seeing us but are how we really look like. As we are not used to seeing ourselves like this, we think we look bad.
If you really want to avoid pictures taken with the front camera mirroring on your iPhone, you can enable Mirror Front Camera in Settings > Camera.
But before you do it, there is something to keep in mind, a reason why you should not mirror the picture. Apple choose default settings for good reasons, see why 4:3 is better than 16:9 on iPhones.
Why you should keep mirroring the front camera on your iPhone
If by enabling the Mirror Front Camera setting, the pictures taken with your front camera on your iPhone look better for you, it might not look better for other people.
Indeed, in the same way, as you are used to see you with a mirrored image, and get perturbed once you see yourself with a non-mirrored picture, other people are used to seeing you as you really are, meaning without being mirrored.
While sharing a mirrored picture of yourself, you might be more confident about the way you look but other people will be perturbed and would think you are looking worst than you are used to.
Therefore, it’s better to start accepting yourself the way you are and keep this Mirror Front Camera setting disabled. The real you is the way you look in real life. Try to improve this real you instead of trying to fool everyone, including yourself, with a mirrored picture that is not the way you look.
Remember that everyone has the same issue, also, everyone looks more fat in iPhone pictures. You are not more ugly than other people.
Author
Maxime Levesque is a technical engineer with more than 5 years of professional experience. He is an expert in computer and phones, mostly on Apple products. Maxime is also the founder of TechBrowser.
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