Is your webcam wonky? A problem that some people have is that when they take a photo using their webcam the resulting image is flipped. What can be causing this strange behaviour and how can it be fixed? Is it a hardware or a software problem? The answer is simpler than you might imagine.
This is not really a webcam problem and it is an obvious function to build into webcams if you think about it, but it does confuse some people who think that their computer is somehow faulty.
If you look into mirror you don’t see yourself as you really are. What you see is a flipped image and it is the reverse of what other people see. It is a mirror image. The question is, should a webcam show a mirror image so that you can use it like a mirror or should it show a true image the right way around?
In some circumstances it can be useful to show a mirror image. I’ve seen ladies use the camera on their phone to check their hair and make up! It’s not just for the fairer sex though and if you are recording a video blog it can be useful to see yourself on the screen as you would a mirror. This means that when you move left the image of yourself onscreen moves left too, rather than the opposite direction as it would appear to someone watching you – your left is their right if you think about it.
When taking photos of events in front of the webcam though, you probably want the image the right way around, as it really looks.
You will probably find a setting in the webcam software to choose whether the image is normal or mirrored. The screen shot is from Logitech webcam software and the setting is in Advanced Settings. It may be in a different place in your webcam software, so dig around and see if you can find it.
