When you’re creating a composite, or doing digital matte painting, it’s easy to get so focused on your task that you fail to see compositional errors. If you flip your work, you can see it completely differently and notice things you didn’t notice before. It’s a perception thing. If you use the usual Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal, apart from taking a long time, you’ll degrade the quality of your work if you do it often. Instead, choose View>Flip Horizontal. Your GPU will render the flipped version of your image, without actually flipping it. You can even work in this view if you like. When you’re done, choose View and uncheck Flip Horizontal. This could also be a fun prank to play on someone when they take a bathroom break, but I don’t recommend that; I’m just saying you could.
This tip originally published in Colin Smith’s Photoshop Tips column, in the July, 2022 issue of Photoshop User magazine.
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