Do you use set mirrored?

Just wondering if it's worth setting a sprite to mirrored, when doing simple moving of a player or monster about, or is it more trouble than it's worth and just make separate animations for all the required directions?

For instance, although the image is mirrored, the image points stay where they are. If I have a 'shoot right' animation frame with an image point on the right hand side of the sprite, and I mirror it for shooting left, the image point is not useful.

I'm guessing it's better to use separate animations in this case.

Depending on circumstances I suppose.

If the animation is equal mirrored, then it would save memory space to use mirroring.

But if your image is not equal, say, a character carries a shield in his right and a sword in his left, when mirrored, the weapon and shield would seem switched. (being in the other hands)

In cases where size matters, and the animation frames are big, then it could save space to have things mirrored, disregarding mirroring effects.

Thanks for the response. I just created more sprites as mirror images. For my needs this was the easiest solution.