Horizontal flips rewrite direction, not just composition
`mirror-image-horizontal` is common for stage stills, sports frames, street photography, and interview grabs with corner bugs. Mirroring swaps driving side, ball-hand dominance, and swing direction—fine for creative crops but risky for news or instructional truth. Embedded jersey numbers, storefront lettering, and name badges become mirrored glyphs unless you replace clean plates. Brand marks pinned to a corner can collide with platform UI or subtitles after the flip. For face workflows tied to ID or access-control references, arbitrary mirroring can break matcher expectations versus the enrolled capture. Batch pipelines should stamp filenames or metadata when a derivative is mirrored so web and social teams do not publish conflicting left/right sets. In edit timelines, flip before or after neighboring shots with intent to avoid jump cuts that reverse motion vectors.
Horizontal mirror workflow
- On `mirror-image-horizontal`, scan for plates, numbers, logos, and corner overlays.
- Confirm the story still reads after direction swaps, then flip.
- Export with a mirrored flag and keep the unmirrored master.