Making a Picture
the Same on Both Sides
Other Pictures, Problems and Procedures
If you would like to work in Paint while you follow these directions, do remember that you can resize your
browserA Browser is the program you use to visit sites on the Internet. Internet Explorer (IE) may be the browser that you use, but there are many others, such as Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, K-Meleon and Blackbird.
You can have as many browsers as you like, and run more than one at the same time. window. If the window is maximised—taking up the whole screen—you'll first need to click the restore button (the middle one of these) 
, then just hover your cursor over a side edge of the browser window until a double-headed arrow appears, press your left mouse button and drag left or right until the window is a suitable size.
You can then grab the browser window by the title bar and drag it to the position that you want it in. You can do this with almost any window on your computer.
Popup help from CSSplay where you'll find other amazing demos
Just get one side right, then copy, flip and paste
Here I've tried to draw a wine glass, and it's come out seriously lop-sided.
I've zoomed in and used the pencil, tried to change the curves—all sorts—but if anything it's worse than when I started.
Using the Rectangular Selection tool, I select one half of the wineglass and drag it away from the other half.
When it's well away from the other half, I press the Ctrl key and keep dragging to make a copy.
.
Click away to cancel the selection.
Now make a selection marquee around the copy on the left.
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Go up to the Image menu and click on Flip/Rotate.
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In the Flip/Rotate dialogue, you'll see that the option checked is Flip Horizontal, so just click OK.
Now you have two half wine glasses.
Double check to be certain that the Transparency option is selected, then carefully drag the flipped image towards its other half until they meet.
The result is that you now have a wine glass that, while not exactly a thing of beauty, is at least symmetrical.
You can use this technique on just about anything: teacups—but add the handle later—furniture, windows and doorways, eyes—but add the iris and pupil later or the drawn face will look odd—anything at all that should be the same on both sides.
You can see that the first two drawings here have been made with exactly the method descibed above, while the two on the right involved a little more work after the flipping had been done.
Another example of the use of flipping half of an image is Making Faces.
Other Pictures, Problems and Procedures
Questions or comments? I'd love to hear from you, especially if you have helpful suggestions regarding any one of this set of pages. They were begun in response to some reader questions and I've arrived at solutions through trial and error. As I went over the exercises and tried to follow my own instructions, I several times saw a quicker or easier way to do something and it's likely that readers may still see some better solutions.
My email address is here.
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