Resize and Reshape with the Free Transform Tool

Resize and Reshape with  the  Free  Transform Tool

Enabling a bounding box around selected objects has its merits: it makes rotation, sizing, and mirroring easy to accomplish. The downside is that you have to put up with a bounding box popping up on your screen whenever you select an object or group of objects.

If the bounding box is getting in your way, choose View Hide Bounding Box (or COMMAND-SHIFT-B [ CTRL-SHIFT-B ]) to make it disappear.

The Free Transform tool applies a functioning bounding box to selected objects. Use it to rotate, resize, or mirror a selected object. When you select a different tool, the bounding box created by the Free Transform tool disappears.

If you are an artist or designer who is new to Illustrator, or if you don t need precision sizing and rotating, you will find the Free Transform tool useful. It s versatile, intuitive, and easy to use. You can quickly resize a selected object using the Free Transform tool by clicking and dragging on a side or corner anchor point. Hold down SHIFT as you drag to maintain the height-to-width ratio as you resize the object.

To rotate a selected object with the Free Transform tool, hover over a corner or side anchor point and click and drag to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise. You can easily mirror (flip) a selected object using the Free Transform tool by clicking and dragging on a side anchor point. To mirror the object horizontally, drag a right or left side anchor point over and past the other side anchor point. To mirror vertically, click on the top anchor point and drag past the bottom anchor point.

As mentioned, using the Free Transform tool is very similar to displaying a bounding box ”it s really a matter of your preference as to whether you want and need the bounding box displayed all the time.

Note  

For more precise control over sizing and rotating, you'll want to use the Scale and Rotate tools. These tools allow you to enter sizes or rotation angles digitally, and to rotate an object around any of the anchor points ”not just the middle of the object.