If you’re just starting out with Photoshop, you may be wondering how to go about transforming your images. There are a few different ways to do this, and which one you use will depend on what you’re trying to achieve.
Here’s a quick rundown of the most common transformation tools and how to use them.
Resizing
If you want to change the dimensions of your image, you’ll need to use the ‘Resize’ tool. This can be found under the ‘Edit’ menu, or by pressing ‘Ctrl+R’ on your keyboard. When you open the ‘Resize’ dialogue box, you’ll see a few different options for changing the size of your image.
You can enter new values for the width and height, or you can choose one of the preset options from the drop-down menu. If you want to preserve the aspect ratio of your image, make sure the ‘Constrain Proportions’ checkbox is ticked. Once you’re happy with your settings, click ‘OK’ to apply the changes.
Cropping
The ‘Crop’ tool is used for trimming down an image to a specific size or shape. To crop an image, select the ‘Crop’ tool from the toolbar, then click and drag around the area you want to keep.
When you release the mouse button, Photoshop will automatically crop away any parts of the image that fall outside of the selection. If you want to fine-tune your cropping area, you can use the handles that appear on the edges of the selection. To cancel a crop operation, press ‘Esc’ on your keyboard.
Rotating and Flipping
The ‘Rotate’ and ‘Flip’ tools are used for just what their names suggest – rotating and flipping images. The ‘Rotate’ tool can be found under the ‘Edit’ menu, or by pressing ‘Ctrl+T’ on your keyboard.
When you open the ‘Rotate Canvas” dialogue box, you’ll see a few different options for rotating your image. You can enter a value in degrees, or choose one of the preset options from the drop-down menu. If you want to Flip an image horizontally or vertically, select either the ‘Flip Horizontal” or “Flip Vertical” option from under the “Edit” menu.
How Do You Transform in Photoshop?
Now that we know some of Photoshop’s transformation features let’s talk about how we can use them in our workflow. The first thing we need to do is open up our image file in Photoshop.
- Open up an Image File:
- Select Transform Tool:
As we saw earlier there are many ways we can select our Transform Tool.
- “Ctrl + T” (Mac: Command + T)
- “Edit → Transform →”
After we select our Transform Tool there are many things we can do with it.
We talked about some of these things earlier like Cropping (“Ctrl + Crop Tool”) and Rotating (“Ctrl + R”) but below is a more comprehensive list.
Here are some things we can do with our Transform Tool:
- ” Alt + Click inside Transformation Box” → this gives us access to all four corners so we can resize from any corner
- “Click → Hold → Drag inside Transformation Box while holding down “Shift” key → this allows us to resize while maintaining our original aspect ratio
- “Click → Hold → Drag inside Transformation Box while holding down “Option / Alt” key → this allows us resizing from center while maintaining our original aspect ratio
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As we discussed earlier if we want to change our Canvas Size we go under “Image → Canvas Size.” We talked about how this works in an earlier section.
Now that we know how to open up an Image File and locate our Transform Tool lets put some of these things into practice.
