Understanding the Free Transform Command

By Michael Topham

Imaging skills

01 December 2009 18:52

There are two ways of transforming your shots. You can either go to Edit > Transform and choose from one of the six commands on offer, or alternatively, you can go to Edit > Free Transform. The advantage of using the latter is that it lets you control the Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort and Perspective commands all at the time with different keyboard shortcuts.

In Digital Photo’s January issue, five of Photoshop’s Transform tools, and the Free Transform command are studied in depth to see how they can be used to correct camera distortion. On sale from December 3rd, you can find out more information about the issue here. To download the start image for this technique, click here.

The Free Transform Keyboard Shortcuts

Scale
Hold the Alt key and drag one of the corner handles outwards on inwards.
Skew
Hold Ctrl and drag one of the side handles. To constrain the slant hold Ctrl + Alt at the same time.
Rotate
Hover the cursor beneath the image until the two rotational arrows appear and then drag to rotate the image. Hold down Shift to rotate the image by 15 degree increments.
Distort
Hold Ctrl and drag one of the four corner handles.
Perspective
Hold Alt+Ctrl+Shift and drag any of the corner handles.