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the Edit Transform menu (Figure 9.44) and these allow you to apply transformations to individual or linked groups of layers. There are three main ways you can apply a transform. You can select a layer or make a selection of the pixels that you wish to transform and choose either Edit Transform or Edit Free Transform. Also, whenever the crop tool or one of the selection tools is active, the Free Transform command is available via the contextual menu. Just right mouse-click on a layer and select ‘Free Transform’. The other option is to check the Show Transform Controls box in the move tool Options bar (Figure 9.45). The main Transform commands include: Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort and Perspective, and these can be applied singly or combined in a sequence before clicking , or double-clicking within the Transform bounding box to OK the transformation (which is applied using the default interpolation method selected in the Photoshop preferences to calculate the new transform shape or position).

Figure 9.44 The Edit Transform submenu. This menu can be used for transforming and rotating individual layers or linked groups of layers.

Figure 9.45 The transform options are also available via the move tool Options bar.

You can apply any number of tweaking adjustments before applying the actual transform and you can at any time use the Undo command ( ) to revert to the last defined transform preview setting. You can also adjust the transparency of a layer during mid-transform. This means that you can modify the opacity of the layer as you transform it (this can help you align a transformed layer to the other layers in an image).

Of all the options, the ‘Free Transform’ option is probably the more versatile and the one you will want to use most of the time. Choose Edit Free Transform or use the keyboard shortcut and modify the transformation using the keyboard controls as indicated on the following pages.

1.

You can rotate, skew or distort an image in one go using the Edit Free Transform command. The following steps show you some of the modifier key commands that can be used to constrain a Free Transform adjustment.

2.

You can place the cursor outside the bounding border and drag in any direction to rotate the image. If you hold down the key as you drag, this constrains the rotation to 15° increments. You can also move the center axis point to change the center of the rotation.

3.

If you hold down the key as you click any of the handles of the bounding border, this allows you to perform a free distortion.

4.

If you want to constrain the distortion symmetrically around the center point of the bounding box, hold down the key as you drag any handle.

5.

To skew an image, hold down the keys and drag one of the side handles.

6.

To carry out a perspective distortion, hold down the keys in unison and drag on one of the corner handles. When you are happy with any of the new transform shapes described here, press or or double-click within the Transform envelope to apply the transform. Press if you wish to cancel.

Repeat Transforms

After you have applied a transform to an image layer or image selection, you can get Photoshop to repeat the transform by going to the Edit menu and choosing: Transform Again (the shortcut here is ). This can be done to transform the same layer again, or you can use this command to identically transform the contents of a separate layer. I generally find the Transform Again command is most useful when I need to repeat a precise transform on two different layers. There is an example coming up on pages 515–517 that shows a creative application of the Free Transform command, where it was used to create a kaleidoscope pattern effect from a single image.

Numeric Transforms

When you select any of the Transform commands from the Edit menu, or check ‘Show Transform Controls’ in the move tool options, the Options bar displays the Numeric Transform commands shown below in Figure 9.46. The Numeric Transform options allow you to accurately define any transformation as well as