How to Mirror in Procreate - the Procreate Symmetry Tool
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There is a way to mirror in Procreate, meaning what you draw on one side of the canvas will be reflected to the other side as well. To mirror in Procreate, you use the symmetry tool. The symmetry tool in Procreate splits the screen up into sections; whatever you draw in one section will show up in the other section/sections as well. This allows you to mirror what you draw.
So, how do you mirror in Procreate? First, we have to turn on the drawing guide. Go to Actions (looks like a wrench in the top left corner > Canvas. Click the toggle on for “Drawing Guide”. Now, tap “Edit Drawing Guide”.
Before you continue on, make sure you can see the guide on the canvas. If you can’t, make sure to adjust the color of the guide and/or the thickness and opacity.
Next, you want to make sure the type of drawing guide selected is “Symmetry” (the guides are toward the bottom of the screen). Once the Symmetry guide is selected, an Options button should appear under it. Tap the Options button.
Select the type of guide option you would like. The type of guide option you choose changes how what you draw will be mirrored. For the vertical guide option, everything will be mirrored vertically; the horizontal guide option will mirror everything horizontally. If you choose the quadrant or radial option, what you draw will be mirrored in every section.
Next, you need to decide if you want rotational symmetry on. Without it on, everything is mirrored, which means it is simply flipped into the other half. With rotational symmetry on, what you draw is reflected and rotated. For example, if I have rotational symmetry off, and I draw an eye, the eye will be mirrored to the other side. With rotational symmetry on, the eye is mirrored and rotated.
Once you’ve decided what guide option you want and if you want rotational symmetry on, turn the toggle on for assisted drawing. Without assisted drawing on, what you draw won’t be mirrored.
Click “Done” (yellow button in the top right corner). Now you can draw, and your brush strokes will be mirrored.
What do you do to turn off the mirror? To do this, you can’t just turn off the drawing guide; the mirror will still work. You have to turn off drawing assist. To do this, you can go back to “Edit Drawing Guide” > “Symmetry” > “Options” and turn off “Assisted Drawing”. Another way to do this is to go to Layers. Under the layer’s name will be the word “Assisted” if that layer has drawing assist. (Tip: when you turn drawing assist on it only applies to the currently selected layer. If you change layers, the mirror will not work. When mirroring, make sure you’re on the assisted layer. If you want to mirror later, you could just change layers so that you can return to the assisted layer later.) If the assisted layer isn’t selected (the selected layer will be blue), tap it. Tap the layer again and it will bring up a menu. On this menu is “Drawing Assist”; it should have a check mark to the right of it. Tap “Drawing Assist” to turn it off.
That’s all for this blog post!
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