Why in the mirror image is different from pictures?

All the matter in the physiology and optics. Let’s start with the optics, in which everything is complicated by the dual nature of light. On the one hand, it is stream flying at high velocity particles photons, and on the other hand – the wave. As flux particles, the light may be absorbed by the surface of the object, be reflected from it or passing through the object (previously "My Planet" explain why glass and transparent ice).

Reflected from a flat surface, the angle of incidence is equal to its angle of reflection. Any mirror partially absorbs light – from 2% to 8%. However, due to the fact that light propagates in different media at different speeds, the beam passing through the transparent material, i.e. at the boundary of two media is refracted. Due to this effect, we can create a lens and the objects in the water appear to us more than they really are.

Since light is not only a stream of particles, but also a wave, we can distinguish the colors of objects. Rather, it is because the materials in different ways absorb and reflect photons of different frequencies. A refracted photons are deflected at different angles, which allows us to see a rainbow – refraction of light on the rain drops.

Flat mirror – it merely reflects an optical device, an image which occurs due to the reflection from the surface of its rays. Moreover, when we look at any object, we do not see it, and rays of light reflected from it, which are distributed in all directions. Therefore, the same subjects can see different people. Magic Mirror is that we do not see the reflected rays of light, and their continuation in "Through the Looking Glass", that is not the object itself and its image, what there is really no. Since the angle of light beam incidence equals the angle of its reflection, the virtual image is located symmetrically mirrored surface. Thus seen size equal to the size of the object.

What we believe its reflection in reality it is not – it’s just a visual projection in the brain subcortex

But not all flat mirrors. Any glass defects affect its "truthfulness". Hence the effect of the curve mirror. In addition, the glass is amorphous material, in fact it is a very viscous liquid, so with time, as it were, "flows" under the action of gravity and waves appear on its surface. Therefore, reflection although little, but distorted.

True, even having a flawlessly smooth mirror, a person perceives seen in it with defects. After all, in fact, what we consider to be with your reflection, in reality they are not – this is just a visual projection in the cerebral subcortex, which is formed by the work of the system of perception of the surrounding world.

Now about physiology. Human eye is a pretty primitive optical device. Even if we assume that it is ideal (and if it were so, there were no short-sighted, farsighters and people with astigmatism), its optical scheme is imperfect.