"Flip Horizontal" through "View"

[Halex]

Is there a way to do a horizontal flip in Affinity Photo without editing the painting itself?
Here's the idea: I'm going to record the painting process on a duplicated screen. Everything I change in the "View" menu doesn't show up in the recording on the other screen, but if I do a "Flip Horizontal" through "Document", it does appear in the recording.

[GarryP]

I’ve read your post a few times but I still can’t quite understand:

• what you have;
• what you are trying to do with it;
• why you are doing it;
• what you expect to happen;
• what the problem is.

Specifically, I don’t know what you mean by:

• “flip...without editing” (how can it be transformed without changing?);
• “the painting” (I don’t know what you have, or what it contains or is made from, or what you are doing with it);
• you mention the View menu but that doesn’t contain any ‘flipping’ functionalities.

I’m quite confused.

Can you give us a full-screen (whole application UI) screenshot, including the Layers Panel, and explain more about what you want to do?

[Halex]

4 hours ago, GarryP said:

I’ve read your post a few times but I still can’t quite understand:

• what you have;
• what you are trying to do with it;
• why you are doing it;
• what you expect to happen;
• what the problem is.

Specifically, I don’t know what you mean by:

• “flip...without editing” (how can it be transformed without changing?);
• “the painting” (I don’t know what you have, or what it contains or is made from, or what you are doing with it);
• you mention the View menu but that doesn’t contain any ‘flipping’ functionalities.

I’m quite confused.

Can you give us a full-screen (whole application UI) screenshot, including the Layers Panel, and explain more about what you want to do?

Hello GarryP, I recorded a video to show you what is happening.

[GarryP]

Thanks for the video, now I understand the issue more.

The View rotation functionalities are for the current View only and do not affect the document in any way, which is why the change that you see isn’t automatically applied to the other View, because the document hasn’t changed but the way you look at it in one View has.

When you use menu “Document → Flip…” you are actually changing the content of the document which is why you see the change in both Views.

As far as I know there’s no way to ‘link’ the different Views so that changes to one View – the View of the document, not the document itself – are automatically applied to another View.

If changes to one View always affected other Views then I think that might make it awkward for some people’s workflows, especially when they need to see the document one way in one View and a different way in another View (for example, the right way up in one View and upside down in another View).

I can see where it could be a nice option to have in some cases, but I can imagine that the implementation could be awkward where different people might want different aspects of some Views to be ‘linked’ (e.g. zoom level, rotation, etc.) while other people don’t want any to be, or all of them, or some of them in certain situations but others in other situations, etc. etc.

I think you might have come across an ‘edge case’ which the developers might not have considered (I can’t remember anyone else asking for such a thing).

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

The View rotation functionalities are for the current View only and do not affect the document in any way, which is why the change that you see isn’t automatically applied to the other View, because the document hasn’t changed but the way you look at it in one View has.

It may not be obvious at first but this is why this function is on the View menu, not on the Document menu, as well as why "New View" & "Views" are on the View menu.

[R C-R]

On 4/29/2025 at 12:28 PM, Halex said:

Everything I change in the "View" menu doesn't show up in the recording on the other screen...

Every edit or other change you do to the document itself should show up in all views -- essentially anything that creates an entry in the History panel. But things like zooming or rotating the view will not because they are not changes to the document.

[Oufti]

I don't know if this could help you but some displays have their own options to change their behaviour. (I used this for April's fool jokes…)