From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Scaling, skewing, and rotating layers using Free Transform - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Scaling, skewing, and rotating layers using Free Transform

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- [Instructor] We're going to take a few moments and look at all of the options that Free Transform has to offer. Now, this document has two layers, the kitchen layer, and then a mirror that's in a frame on the wall, and I want to put the kitchen so that it looks like it's in the mirror. I'll start by converting the kitchen layer to a smart object by right clicking and choosing Convert to Smart Object. Now we can make as many transformations as we want and we'll never lose any image quality. Then I'll choose the Edit menu and come down to Free Transform. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command + T on Mac or Control + T on Windows. Now, by default, the width and height are going to be constrained so that we don't distort the image when we transform it. If we ever want to distort it, we can uncheck that link icon or we can temporarily turn it off by just holding down the Shift key when we drag. If I hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows, then Photoshop will transform this from the center. If I want to reposition a layer, I just need to drag within the transformation handles. To rotate, I can position the cursor outside of the transformation handles and click and drag. Now, by default, Photoshop is going to transform around the center of the image. However, this can be modified using the reference point. If it's not enabled, you can enable it on the options bar and then choose from any of the icons. So I'll choose the upper right, and now when I rotate, we can see that it would rotate around the upper right transformation handle. I can also drag the reference point anywhere inside the image, and now it would rotate or transform around that point. All right, let's reset that to the center point. You can also enter specific values in the option bar for width and height as well as for angle. In this case, I'm going to type in 0 in order to remove the rotation. Now, if I want to select different transformations, like skew or perspective, I can return to the Edit menu and then select them from this menu. Or we can just right click anywhere within the transformation handles. I'll choose Skew and then I'll grab a center point if I wanted to skew the image. In order to change the perspective, I'll drag a corner point, and if I want to distort the image freely, well now I can select any of the anchor points and drag them. You can also right click to access additional options such as warping, and we can use the contextual task bar if we wanted to quickly flip either horizontally or vertically the layer. Now we can use multiple undo, Command + Z, and then Command + Z again to step back through our changes. Or we can just click on the cancel icon in order to reset this. I'm going to hide the kitchen layer for a moment, And then I'm going to switch to the polygonal lasso tool, and I'm going to zoom in twice because I want to make a mask around the outside of the mirror. So I'll click once in the upper left corner, click again in the upper right, the lower right, lower left, and then I can double click and Photoshop will automatically close the selection for me. Then we'll make the kitchen layer visible, and then add a layer mask so that we only see the kitchen within the mirrored area. I'll zoom out using Command + 0, and to transform the layer but not the mask, I'll click the link icon in between them. Make sure that I have the layer targeted and not the mask, and then use Command + T on Mac or Control + T on Windows to free transform. I'll transform this a little bit smaller, but also hold down the Command key on Mac or Control key on Windows in order to distort it to fit within that mirror. I'm going to make it a little bit larger because I'm going to add a small feather to the edge of the mask in order to make it look a little bit more realistic. All right, I'll click Done and then target the mask, and on the Properties panel, I'll increase the feather slider to about 2. Then to make the kitchen blend more with the mirror, I'm going to change the blend mode to Overlay, and I'll decrease the opacity a bit. Now, because we've made this a smart object, even after I save this file, as long as I save it as a Photoshop file or a TIFF file, I can always come back and make additional changes without losing any image quality because we converted the layer into a smart object. While we used a photograph in this example, the same transformation techniques when you're working with any type of layer, so the next time you need to transform a layer non-destructively, be sure to convert it into a smart object first and then make the transformations.

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