Flip Canvas Horizontal is a useful adjustment in Photoshop that gives you a mirror image of your photograph. A few words of warning, which photographers and particularly photo editors should remember.

Flipping an photograph that contains writing will create problems. This is obvious if you can read the text, less so if you can’t.  If a photo editor or graphic designer can’t read kanji it becomes far too easy for images to get flipped during layout. This has happened to me several times. Even more troubling are the cases where an image of a Japanese person in a kimono is flipped. In one simple step in Photoshop you have created the living dead. This is because

“For both men and women, always wrap the right side of the kimono over the body, then overlap it with the left side. Right on top of the left is only used to dress a corpse for burial.” Japanese kimono.com

Soon you will begin to notice the flip canvas horizontal adjustment in unexpected places. This screen shot from the movie Rain Man has Tom Cruise holding the bag in his right hand, and Dustin Hoffman wearing a small red badge on the left side of his jacket.

Rain Man movie screen shot

Movie poster, VHS/DVD cover has a flipped image. I presume this is because Dustin Hoffman takes top billing and therefore his name comes first on the movie poster. In order to have the correct name above each person they simply flipped the image. Who will ever notice?

Rain Man - flip canvas horizontal