Well, It is quite an undeniable fact that there are many graphic designers who are able to achieve amazing stuff with Photoshop. But, for those of us who are still eager to learn and create such artworks, we need to master the basics. Many sites feature tutorials on creating wonderful text effects, stunning photo-manipulations and other stuff. Very few(among the popular ones) sites actually explain the basics about the features available in Photoshop and how to exactly start off it.

Once you’ve become adept in these individual features, by knowing what exactly happens when you apply such effects (without blindly following the tutorials), the reason behind what we are trying to achieve with them becomes very clear and we can easily adopt such techniques to create new things. We can thus keep experimenting with these different features until we are able to master it.

So, these are the series of tutorials in which, I shall try to explain ‘Why are we doing, what we are trying to do?’. These tutorials are intended to kick start your hobby as a designer. So, today, we will be learning about the Transformation Tool.

In this short tutorial about the Transformation Tool, we will be learning from the basics of how to scale an image and we shall escalate into warping them. We will also learn about a few nifty techniques which we can adopt to create some cool designs.

First, I have a selected this image for a very significant reason. It is the Adobe’s Creek a small stream which flows in certain parts of the county lands and it was from this creek, ADOBE SYSTEMS’s name was derived. Download the image here

First, Open a new document in Photoshop and you will notice certain options such as seen below:

1. The ‘Name‘ suggests the name of the document.

2. The ‘Preset‘ field suggests the size of the document. There are various standards of sizes, but for this we shall choose a custom size wherein we can select the size of the document in pixels, inches or centimeters.

3. ‘Resolution‘ defines the number of pixels per inch for the image. This is a serious parameter to look into if you are planning to print the final image because this defines the clarity of the print. If you are just experimenting with Photoshop, then 72 ppi should be reasonable enough.

4. Every image uses a distinct ‘color mode‘. Adobe have incorporated the most common, established color models, such as RGB and CMYK, into Photoshop. However, in order to use a particular color model for a particular image, you need to tell Photoshop which one you want to use. You do this by choosing a color mode. But in order to choose, you must understand how each one works. Check out this amazing article on how exactly each of these modes work : Color Modes

I have given a brief introduction of these color modes here :

RGB Mode :
RGB refers to Red, Blue and Green which are the primary colors. Combining these 3 colors in different colors can create a total of 16.8 million colors. RGB mode is used when the images are published for the internet and have to be displayed on the computer screen.

CMYK Mode:
The CYMK color scheme or mode is another very well known color scheme in Photoshop. The CYMK color scheme is generally used when the image or the graphic created is to be printed on paper. This scheme is based on the light absorbing quality on paper. CYMK images comprises of colors produced from the combination of 4 colors of cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Grayscale Mode:
Grayscale mode is used when the images are to be created are in black and white. In Grayscale mode, all on has to do is enter a value from 256 levels of grey to get the desired color. The value 0 signifies total black while the value 255 signifies total white.

Lab Color mode:
The Lab color mode actually includes all of the colors that you can create in both the RGB and CMYK modes. Like RGB, the Lab mode consists of three color channels. The first channel is Lightness (L) and the other tow are color range ‘a’ and ‘b’. The Lightness component, otherwise known as luminance, can range from 0 to 100. A Lightness value of 0 equals black and a value of 100 equals white. So, the higher the Lightness value is, the more vivid the color.

Step 1:

OK, Now we shall move on to the basics of the Transformation tool. Paste the downloaded image of the Adobe’s Creek onto the document after choosing n optimum size.

Step 2:

To apply transformation, we can either go to Edit>Transform or just press CTRL + T (CMD + T) in case of a Mac. A boundary appears around the image as shown below:

Step 3:

SCALING – The image can be expanded in either direction or scaled up or down by using the Scaling option. Scaling allows you to enlarge or shrink a graphic around a reference point. To scale a graphic, we go to Edit > Transform > Scale. or we can just click on the corner and side handles and scale the image.

Step 4:
Now we will the other transformation techniques:

Skew: Skew transformations slant objects either vertically or horizontally.

Distort: Distort transformations allow you to stretch an image in any direction freely.

Perspective: The Perspective transformation allows you to add perspective to an object.

Step 5:

If you observe, you can see the centre of the image marked with another handle as shown. It is called the centroid. It is with respect to this point, all the transformation occurs. It acts as a reference point(fulcrum) for transforming the image.

Step 6:

ROTATE – To rotate an object, either go to Edit > Transform > Rotate or just move the cursor around the image until you get this type of cursor :

Now, holding the mouse button, move the cursor around clockwise or counter-clockwise to rotate the object:

Step 7:

Now for the final transformation called the ‘Warp‘. This is an amazing type of transformation which actually fuses all the other transformations and creates a whole new dimensions of distorting an image. The image is divided into several control points. By varying the position of these points, we can control the structure of the image.

You can go to Edit > Transform > Warp or just click the Warp icon on the toolbar:

Step 8:

Now you can try various type of warping transformations. I have shown how each of these look after they are applied to an image:

Alternatively, you can simply use the Transformation Toolbar to achieve all this. Look at the image below for reference:

Step 9:

This is not everything that we can accomplish with the Transformation Tool. We can even select a certain part of the image and transform that part individually.

Using the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE Tool, select a part of the image and press CTRL + T to get the handle and follow the same above procedures as above.

Step 10:

Well, that’s about it. We have finally learnt how to use the Transformation tool. Here are a few things that you can achieve using the Tool:

I hope we were able to learn something useful today. As i said, these is one of the fundamental features in Photoshop, so once we master these techniques, we can adopt them to create amazing stuff later on.

Next tutorial on ‘Photoshop Basics’ is about the Photoshop Toolbox in detail. We will learn how and where to use these amazing tools and also the ‘science’ behind it.

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