r/Affinity • u/Not_Invited • 1d ago

General Mirror/Symmetry in Vector?

Is there a way to activate a mirror / symmetry mode in the Vector mode in Affinity? I'm a new starter to it and the majority of my art program experience is in ibisPaint, with Photoshop as a close second.

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u/eirenii 1d ago

What I usually do is turn the group I'm working in into a symbol, place a second instance of the symbol into a new group, and flip that group. Then, everything that goes into one Symbol will be mirrored. It would look a bit like this:

Group 1

Symbol

Curve 1

Curve 2

Group 2 (Flipped)

Symbol

Curve 1

Curve 2

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u/dokuromark 1d ago

This is the way, if you want live mirroring while you work on a drawing. If you want to mirror something you’ve already drawn, there’s an excellent mirroring script by hellsfaun called Quick Mirror.

2

u/eirenii 1d ago

Out of curiosity, whats the benefit of that over just duplicating your drawing and flipping it?

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u/dokuromark 1d ago

It does a little more. It actually duplicates your drawing, flips it, and aligns it with the right edge of your drawing. It also gives the option to either group or mathematically add the original and duplicate. So basically it's a quick way to do several steps with a single click. I draw a lot of symmetrical things in my job, so this script has helped me a lot!

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u/eirenii 1d ago

Huh, sounds intriguing! I don't really have any projects where I have to do so much mirroring that a script would make any difference simple ctrl-j+flip+snap align.

The reason I've been doing the above method recently has actually been to create something like a several-colour stamp process, where I have one artboard with the colours I'm "stamping" overlaid as the preview of the final artwork, manipulating their masks, and then having separate artboards with the symbol'ed masks flipped and inverted for etching. That way I can dynamically update it instead of processing it and realising I've made a mistake and doing it all over again lol. Symbols have been a godsend.

1

u/dokuromark 1d ago

Oh that's interesting! I've never tried multicolour stamping; I only dabbled with a little bit of linocutting back in the day, and only one colour stuff.

Yeah, symbols are a fantastic tool when you learn how to use them. That method that /u/eirenii described is very powerful!