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

It's been about five months since we've explored Photoshop's Transform command, and there's a few useful things I haven't covered, so let's take another look.

Did you know that you can use the Measurement tool (it looks like a ruler and is hidden under the Eyedropper tool in 6.0) to define an angle and then choose Edit>Transform>Rotate in 6.0, or Edit>Transform>Numeric in 5.5 to make a layer rotate to the angle of the line you drew with the Measurement tool.

Or, instead, if your document is crooked, you can straighten it by drawing a line (with the Measurement tool) that represents the angle the document is currently at. Then you can choose Image>Rotate>Arbitrary and Photoshop will insert the proper setting to straighten the image.

If you're used to using Photoshop 5.5 and have noticed that Adobe removed the Numeric Transform feature in 6.0, there is no need to worry. All they did is replace it with Edit>Free Transform. When you select that choice, you should find all the options you are familiar with in the Options bar that appears across the top of your screen.

Did you know that your can use Edit>Transform>Scale on a Type Layer and it won't degrade the quality of the text? That's because all Photoshop does is modify the settings attached to the text (size, leading, etc.). That means you can scale text as often as you'd like without having to worry about its quality.

On the other hand, if you are working with a photographic image, you'd better be careful when scaling your image. If you scale it up, the image will lose its sharpness and become soft. The larger you make it the more blurry it will appear. Scaling the image down on the other hand won't harm it much, but you should always resharpen the image to make sure it still looks nice and crisp.

When you select any of the choices under the Edit>Transform menu, you will always transform the contents of the active layer. If you have a selection active, then you'll only transform the selected area of the active layer. But, what if you want to transform the selection without affecting the actual contents of a layer? Well, instead of going to the Edit menu, try choosing Select>Transform Selection. That way you'll just be transforming the marching ants and the image will remain untouched. After choosing Transform Selection, you can right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) to get to a list of functions (Scale, Rotate, etc.).

If you're ever rotating anything, you might want to think about going into full screen mode (just type "F" before choosing transform), that way you can still see any handles that extend beyond the edge of your image.

If you're used to working with the choices under the Edit>Transform menu, you can replace those commands with Edit>Free Transform. Why would you want to do that? Well, Free Transform has a simple keyboard command that makes it much faster to transform multiple objects... Command-T on a Mac and Ctrl-T on Windows. Then, after you've typed that, you can drag the corners to scale the image (hold Option on a Mac, or Alt in Windows to scale from the center) To rotate, move your cursor just outside the corners (until your cursor changes to a curve), hold Command and Shift (Mac), or Ctrl and Shift (Win) and drag a side handle to Skew. To change the perspective, hold Command-Option-Shift (Mac), or Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Win). Or better yet, if you hate remembering keyboard commands, just type Command-T (Mac) or Ctrl-T (Win) and then right-click (Win), or Control-Click (Mac) and then choose the option you'd like to use from the pop-up menu that appears. You can also type Enter to finish your transformation, or type Esc to abort it.

Well, that should keep you "transformed" for a bit. I'm in Minneapolis right attending a friend's wedding and tomorrow I'm off to Dallas to teach another one of my web seminars, then I'm going to indulge myself and take a vacation, something I haven't done in years, and hopefully I'll remember how to do that without a manual. . Talk to you when I get back.

-Ben Willmore