How to flip an image in Photoshop – Tutorial

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Flipping images option in Photoshop allows your object / image to flip either horizontally or vertically. Flip Photoshop option is useful when you want to duplicate a whole or part of an image and want to make it look a bit different.

In this tutorial, we are showing you how to flip an image in Photoshop – or rather, how to flip an object inside a photo in Photoshop.

Steps to flip an image in Photoshop

1. First of all open Adobe Photoshop. We are using Adobe Photoshop CS 5.5 but this also works on earlier or later versions.

2. Next, Open the image that you want to flip. To do that, click on the File >> Open and select the file you want to open. Then click on the Open.

3. Next, on the menu bar, select Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Horizontal. This will flip your whole image (canvas) horizontally.

4. As our complete image is flipped horizontally. Instead of this, you may want to flip the particular object or portion instead of the whole canvas. In that case, make a selection with the Magnetic Lasso Tool around the image or object / image in the canvas that you want to flip. To perform this, select Magnetic Lasso Tool (L) and make selection around the object or portion you want to flip. Before making the selection, make sure you set feather = 3 so your object won’t look bad after pasting it to new layer.

5. First of all copy the selection by selecting Edit > Copy from the menu bar simply press ctrl+c. Next, if you flip the portion then you will see that the image is distorted due to background. To overcome this, create a new layer by selecting ‘Create new layer’ button in the Layers palette. If the Layers palette is hidden then press F7 or from the menu bar choose Window > Layers.

6. Next, select newly added layer by clicking new layer in the layer’s palette and then paste the content in it by selecting Edit > Paste from the menu bar or simply press ctrl+v.

7. Next, from the menu bar select Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal

8. Now, this time your object / portion from the whole image is flipped excluding background. Arrange the object / portion by dragging it after selecting move tool so it looks good and realistic.

Here is the final result: