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Affinity Photo: A feature to mirror the canvas-preview


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Hi!

A few programs I know (for example GIMP) do have a feature to mirror the canvas-preview (not the image), not only to see if the portrait or so you're painting is symmetric, but also to be able to paint brushstrokes that are curved in the opposite direction. This feature itself has no impact on the image. It's just a view-option, that also allows to paint mirrored.That is verry helpfull for painting and also for retouching. It would be nice if Affinity Photo would have this feature too. Maybe it already has, but I couldn't find it.

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I agree,

I've not found the function either. I have only found the one to rotate the entire image in increments to the right or left which is also very useful for painting.

Mirror is an important topic especially for painters and illustrators. Sometimes I miss it to refresh my mind after a while working on an picture, and also to check proportions and perspective. I hope it will be added in the future.

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That would be nice. To rotate the entire image just for easier painting is no good idea, because it will cause a loss of quality. Whenever you transform (scale, rotate, warp, mirror...) an image or layer, the containing pixels must be computed new (Interpolation).  If you do that too often, the sharpness wil get lost. This will not happen if you only rotate, scale, mirror... the preview.

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Under the Document Menu there is the option to Flip Horizontally. (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Left Arrow), would that do what you want?

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Right PaulEC, that can do almost the same thing (because you can always do the reverse operation), however the canvas and its contents are flipped and rotated permanently.
But if you rotate from View menú, rotation is temporary; rather than rotating the canvas permanently, you can rotate the document view instead, which is akin to physically rotating your working space. This allows you to view your document from a different angle without manipulating its layout.
Well, it would be interesting to have flip horizontal/vertical like temporal non destructive function Rotate of View menu.

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Hi Paul!

No, I don't think so, because this is a transformation option. All pixels will be computed new, and that will harm the quality of the image. What I am longing for is a feature that only mirrors the preview of the canvas, not the canvas, the image or the layer - without any real effect on the image and its pixels. Similar as GIMP and Krita do this. This option is verry helpfull if you paint for example portraits, because you can see better if it really is symmetrical. And it is easier for right-hander to paint strokes that go from the upper left to the lower right. For left-hander of course the opposite way. What I mean is a feature that would have it's place in the "View"-Menu. Near to the "Rotate left" and "Rotate right" Options.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Yeah, this definitely needs to be added as a feature. It should be incredibly lightweight to perform in their rendering pipeline, but in avoiding your eye going off and letting stuff get out of proportion being able to view the mirror of your document (without impacting it) is huge. Given they already have support for rotations on the viewport, presumably as a matrix, creating a mirror version should be fairly trivial (though, I know, it almost never works out that way once the code hits the compiler).

Anyway - big +1 for this - would be immensely helpful with using Affinity Photo for creating concept art.

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  • 10 months later...

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