Back to Titanic: Making Waves: Copal's Queue: Transforming

Today in Titanic History - with Searching

Today in
Titanic History
Tuesday, December 16, 2025

1898 - 1st class survivor Master John Borie Ryerson was born to Arthur Larned Ryerson and Emily Maria Borie Ryerson in Illinois, USA.

1876 - 2nd class passenger Mr Richard James Slemen was born to Augusta L. Steed in Landrake, Cornwall, England, UK.

1951 - 2nd class survivor Master John Morgan jr Davies died of suicide by barbituate poisoning in Detroit, Michigan, USA at the age of 48.

1887 - 2nd class survivor Mrs Antonine Marie Mallet was born to the Magnin family in Paris, France.

1892 - 3rd class passenger Mrs Eileen Mcnamee was born to Richard O'Leary (Army Sergeant in the Royal Engineers) and Minnie Petheram O'Leary in Plymouth, England, UK.

1908 - The first keel plate was laid for the Hull 400, later called the Olympic, Titanic's sister ship.

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Transforming

Something I use a lot in Photoshop is Transform. This should not be confused with the filter "Render | 3D Transform." What I use is under the Edit menu. Make a selection, with or without feathering, or choose a layer. You cannot Transform the "Background" layer. To do this, duplicate that layer ("Layer | Duplicate Layer") and you'll get an exact copy that you can transform. If you are wanting to flip or rotate the entire image, every layer included, use "Image | Rotate Canvas."

Once you've made your choice, small grey boxes appear around your selection or layer. Here I call them handles.

Photoshop gives you these choices when Transforming:

Scale. Increase or decrease the size of a layer or just a selection. To keep the proportions equal, hold down the Shift key as you change the scale.
Rotate. To turn it 45 degrees at a time, hold down the Shift key as you turn the box.
Skew. I cannot even think of a reason to use this, but it makes the selection or layer into a parallelogram.
Distort. You may move the handles and they will move in most any direction. The best use for this has been to make the distorted edges of scans and cels level.
Perspective. This is the same as distort only it changes two sides at a time. You can also choose the edge of the transform box to make it appear to have a vanishing point above the box.
Numeric. The options here are used when you want something far more exact than you think you can make "freehand" by moving the mouse. It works the same as the choices by the same name only use can use percentages, increments in degrees, position by pixels, and so forth. Experiment with these since they may give you a more accurate transform.
Rotate 180; 90 CW; 90 CCW. The CW and CCW stand for "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" respectively. Ninety degrees is a quarter turn and 180 is a half turn.
Flip Horizontal; Flip Vertical. A horizontal flip switches top and bottom and a vertical flip changes from left to right.

Be advised, when making seamless background or frames, do not use Transforming. If you do happen to want to scale, rotate, or flip anything, do it on another document. Then cut and paste from that document to the background you are making. When you use Offset after Transforming, the Offset filter will remember the coordinates of the selection or layer before it was transformed.

Making Waves

corey's interviews
history with kelly
copal's queue
site of the month
the flub report
wallpapers/quotes
graphic sets
characters
scenes
downloads
rare pictures
facts
books
columns

Copal's Queue
introduction
thumbnails
seamless bg
frames
webrings
yahoo
graphics pop
graphics pop ii
loading
diamond bg
striped bg
text
transparent gifs
seamless frames
guides
transforming
mouseovers
tables
cleaning up
flyout window
image maps
programs i love
actions
cropping

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