The transform tool

One of the more useful tools is your transform tool.   Now I use this a lot through this class, and a lot of my own work, so it’s often used as a shortcut.    It’s a long way under edit, and it’s this one called “Free Transform”  here.

Now I use it - I’m going to use the shortcut throughout this course, and it’s a really good one for you to use as well.  You can see on a Mac it’s command T, and on a PC  it’s control T,  So I’m going to have command T on my keyboard. Watch this - because I’ve got my grid  viewed  here.   If you haven’t got your grid showing, go to view, show and go to guides. Okay watch this - because my guides are out, it’ll snap to it, and say I wanted to get quite a bit bigger, I want to snap it out so it spans 4 columns here  - this button. Great, it will snap to the guides if it needs to, or you can turn it off, and it won’t.  

Now a couple of other handy modifier tools is - let’s hit escape.  Escape get’s rid of our transformation, and let’s go to command T, or control T on a PC.  And watch this, - if I hold down the shift key while I’m dragging one of these corners, can you see that the height and width is exactly the same.    So if I undo that - if I don’t hold the shift key down, I can move it to any old size I like, which is really handy,  but also really good if you hold the shift key down.   Now I’ve hit escape again, so let’s look at the other modifier key, - so command T, and it’s the ALT key.  So we are holding the alt key down, and say I want to make this these 4 columns, by holding the alt key to this one side, watch what happens.  Can you see the opposite side comes along for the ride.  And that’s the alt key - if I hold that down while I’m stretching it out.  

When you’ve finished, and you’ve finished transformation, and you like it, hit enter on your keyboard or return, and that will commit that,  That will finish the transformation, and you are ready to go.