How do I flip an image

[sanfairyanne]

I used to have a tutorial on a CD that showed how to flip an image from any given point. I remember the tutorial showed a girls face, the tutorial explained that almost nobody has a completely symmetrical  face, however with the tutorial you could flip the face to give perfect symmetry. So if the girl had a mole on one cheek when flipped she would have a mole on both cheeks.

I thought it must have something to do with Free Transform but I can't make it work.

Does anyone know ? Sorry if my explanation seems a bit vague I can't think of a better way to explain it.


Many thanks in advance.

[digitaldog]

Select (that's the hard part)>Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.

[sanfairyanne]

I guess I don't understand you DigitalDog, 'select'. If I hit edit>transform>flip horizontal I just get the reverse of the image, i.e if she had a mole on the right cheek it would then become the left. What I'm trying to do essentially is duplicate the face by flipping it from the centre of the nose. Sorry this is one of those things that's really easy to do but hard to explain.

[digitaldog]

You have to select the half of the face you want to flip (and copy that to duplicate then filp).

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Two layers
One original, the other flipped
Mask half the face on the flipped one
Voila!

[sanfairyanne]

I just did a real quick job as Slobodan suggests but I think DigitalDog knows exactly what I mean, I'll faff around until I figure it out.

[sanfairyanne]

I seem to remember using Free Transform and moving the point in the middle to line up with the nose. I don't get the result I expect but I'm sure that was in the tutorial. Damned tutorial CD's I look after them but they don't last 5 minutes

[digitaldog]

You can use Free Transform too IF there's more to the work than just a simple flip. Command (control) T after selecting the area. The you can use the contextual menu to flip AND then skew, size, etc.

[sanfairyanne]

DD, sorry to be a bit dim, I open the image, duplicate the image, if I go straight to Free Transform I get the 'handles' in the corners and centre of the image. I can then flip horizontally but it doesn't give me a ''two mole face''.

Can you please spell it out for me... I'm not understanding the full workflow.

This is the best I can come up with (attached) but I can't figure out how to use Free Transform to get the third image (which I did with a mask).

[digitaldog]

You must select the portion of the face you want to filp. As I said, that's the difficult part. So select the left side of the face, just use a square marquee tool for the time being.
Copy or better, Command/Control J (copy to a new layer).
You can simply use the Flip command I originally provided. Move that into the new position.

IF you need to do more than a simple flip, you need the options in Free Transform, you can do that too. After you have the copied part of the face, call up Free Transform (Command/Control T). If you select the contextual menu (Control Click), you'll see various options including Flip Horizontally. After the flip, you can continue to move the Free Transformed selection into position, scale, skew, etc.

[sanfairyanne]

Thanks DD, I'm kind of there, this isn't the way I remember it but it seems to work, I just found this image on the internet so it's really poor res'. I hope the poor woman never sees it.

Thanks very much for your help.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

You have to start with a symmetrical shot too. That is, face parallel to the camera, no shoulder turn. If you do not, you'll end up with those caricatures above.

[sanfairyanne]

Thanks Slobodan, I'm away from my camera so I just pulled this off the internet, I'll remember this technique though.

[Alan Klein]

Wouldn't it be easier to clone out the mole?  Can one actually duplicate one side of the face so that the viewer won't notice?

[sanfairyanne]

Well the mole was just a way of explaining the process, truth be known I wanted to use the idea in a landscape image. It was a trick I learnt and forgot so I'm grateful to DD for helping me remember it.

[Glenn NK]

You have to start with a symmetrical shot too. That is, face parallel to the camera, no shoulder turn. If you do not, you'll end up with those caricatures above.

 

Best to not show the lady those transformed images.

[sniper]

I'm wondering if the way suggested in the tutorial involved making a dupicate layer, then using the transform to flip that layer over and masking out the one side of the face?

[sanfairyanne]

I'm 90% sure there was no masking. Next time I'm in the UK I'll pull out the CD and try to load it on another computer.