The Photoshop Tip of the Week for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

Happy New Year!

Let's start out this year right by getting to be more productive in Photoshop. This week we'll be exploring the Edit>Free Transform command.

The Edit>Free Transform feature is typically used to scale and rotate a layer (or multiple layers if they are linked together). You can also type Command-T (Macintosh), or Ctrl-T (Windows) as a shortcut to get to Free Transform. After you choose that command, you can click and drag the corner handles to scale the image, or move your cursor beyond one of the corner handles and drag to rotate the image. Let's take a look at a few more unusual uses for Free Transform.

Did you know that you could add Shift to the Free Transform keyboard command to have Photoshop use the last transformation setting again? Sometimes I use that feature to move two objects an equal amount (even if they are in separate documents). Just choose Edit>Free Transform, drag the layer (from somewhere near the middle, not the corner or side handles) to a new location and then press Enter to finish the transformation. Now you can click on any layer in the Layers palette and then type Shift-Command-T (Macintosh), or Shift-Ctrl-T (Windows) to apply those same settings again.

You can also hold the Option key (Macintosh), or Alt key (Windows) to transform a duplicate. I use this all the time when I'm writing a magazine article and I need to show four versions of something with different filters applied. I'll first choose Layer>New>Layer Via Copy to duplicate the layer, then I'll choose Edit>Free Transform and then reposition the layer. Then I can hold Shift to have Photoshop remember the last settings I used and I can also hold Option (Macintosh), or Alt (Windows) to have it duplicate the layer at the same time (that's Shift-Option-T (Macintosh) or Shift-Alt-T (Windows). Using that technique, I can very quickly create ten duplicates of a layer that are evenly spaced down the page.

When rotating a layer, you can click and drag the center point after choosing Edit>Free Transform to change where Photoshop will pivot the image. So, if part of a layer lines up with another object, be sure to move that center point before you start to rotate the layer so Photoshop is aware of where the image lines up and therefore where it should pivot the image.

You can also precisely position a layer using Free Transform in Photoshop 6.0. Just type Command-T (Macintosh), or Ctrl-T (Windows) to get into Free Transform mode, and then look up at the Options Bar that appears at the top of your screen. You'll find a square with a bunch of handles on the corners. Click on the handle that appears in the upper left of the square and then enter a new position in the X and Y fields to tell Photoshop where the upper left corner of the image should appear. In earlier versions of Photoshop, you had to choose Edit>Transform>Numeric to precisely position a layer.

I could go on and on about how many cool things you can do with the Free Transform feature, but this is supposed to be a tip and not a book, so let's call it a day and try to get caught up after all that holiday fun that might have zapped your energy.

-Ben Willmore
Founder, Digital Mastery