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

Welcome back to the newly resurrected Photoshop Tip of the Week! If you're wondering where the devil I've been-I haven't burned up in any of the forest fires here in Colorado, I haven't joined the Foreign Legion and I haven't defected from Photoshop. What I have done is finished updating my book, videos and seminars for Photoshop 7.0 (whew!), and thankfully my schedule is beginning to loosen up a bit. As I write this I'm packing for a 3.5 week tour of Australia and New Zealand (for details, check out www.photoshoplink.com). You should hear from me on a much more regular basis from now on, but if things get hairy again, please be merciful (don't cancel your subscription-remember it's free!), and know that I'll be back whenever I can.

This week we'll re-examine Photoshop's Edit>Transform command. Why again, you ask? Because there are so many ways this feature can help you, it's worth gleaning every last bit. If you haven't used it all that much, then be sure to check out my previous Transform command tips at www.digitalmastery.com/tips/010201tip.html. Since this is the third time we've visited this area of Photoshop, I'll try not to repeat any info from previous tips. You can check out the second installment of Transform tips at www.digitalmastery.com/tips/052101tip.html.

When using any of Photoshop's transform functions (Edit>Transform), the edges of the transform bounding box will usually snap to the edge of your document, to guides and to other objects. To prevent that, once you start dragging one of the transform handles, hold the Ctrl key down on Mac or Windows.

If you'd like to transform multiple layers, then make sure those layers are linked together by clicking on the indent that appears just to the left of the layer thumbnail preview image in the Layers palette. To unlink the layers, Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Win) on the paintbrush icon for the active layer.

When scaling a layer, you can drag the left edge handle all the way to the right (passing the right edge of the layer) to flip the layer horizontally.

You can click on the settings that appear in the Options bar at the top of your screen and then use the up and down arrows to change the settings. Just be sure to first link the width and height settings, otherwise you might end up squishing the image vertically but not horizontally.

If the corner handles are too distracting to really judge what you've done, then type Command-H to hide their edges.

When rotating a layer, Photoshop pivots your image around the center point (it looks like a crosshair). You can drag that crosshair to a different location to change where the pivot point is. The only problem is that it likes to snap to the corners and edge of the layer. To prevent it from snapping, zoom in on your image so the center point is more screen pixels away from whatever it was snapping to.

When dragging one of the handles to scale your image, hold Option and Shift to scale both sides proportionally.

I often lower opacity before of a layer before transforming it so I can see how it relates to the underlying image. When the Move tool is in use, you can use the number keys on your keyboard to lower the opacity of a layer (3=30%, 23=23%, etc.)

If you need to perform multiple transformations on a single layer (scale, rotate, etc.), then it's best to do them all in one operation instead of pressing Enter between each one. You'll get a higher quality result when they are all done as one step. Just choose from the list that appears in the Image>Transform menu and don't press enter until you've completed all the transformations you plan on applying to that layer.

I just finished signing hundreds of copies of my new Photoshop 7.0 Studio Techniques book. If you'd like to get your hands on one, visit www.digitalmastery.com/book. We're offering a 20% discount, and I think you'll really like the new color management chapter and all the updated information.

Don't forget to check out this week's Photoshop Questions of the Week at www.digitalmastery.com/questions

-Ben Willmore