Resizing and How to Reach Those Hidden Free Transform Handles


What happens if you drag a large photo onto a smaller photo in Photoshop? (This happens all the time, especially if you're collaging or combining two or more photos.) You have to resize the photo using Free Transform, right? Right. But here's the catch: When you bring up Free Transform, at least twoor more likely all fourof the corner handles you need to resize the image are out of reach. You see the image's center point, but not the handles you need to reach to resize. Here's how to get around that hurdle quickly and easily:

Step One

For the purpose of this example, create a new document in Photoshop's default size of 7x5". Now open a photo that's larger than your 7x5" document (in other words, open most any photo from your digital camera because it'll be larger than that). The photo shown here is roughly 10x6".

Step Two

Press V to get the Move tool and click-and-drag this photo on top of your 7x5" document (the photo that you drag appears on its own layer automatically). Since the photo you added was larger than the document you dragged it into, the photo extends off the sides and top quite a bit. So, to make it fit comfortably in this new document, you'll need to scale the photo down.

Step Three

Press Command-T (PC: Control-T) to bring up Free Transform. Here's where the problem beginsyou need to grab the Free Transform corner points to scale the photo down, but you can't even see the Free Transform handles in this image (you see the center point, but there's no way to reach the corner handles to scale the image down to size).

Step Four

Here's the trick: Once you have Free Transform in place (and can't see the handles), just press Command-0 (PC: Control-0). Photoshop will automatically resize your document window and your image, so you can reach all the handlesno matter how far outside your image area they once were. Two things: (1) This trick only works once you have Free Transform active, and (2) it's Command-0 (PC: Control-0)that's the number zero, not the letter O.



    The Photoshop CS2 Book(c) for Digital Photographers
    The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
    ISBN: B002DMJUBS
    EAN: N/A
    Year: 2006
    Pages: 187
    Authors: Scott Kelby

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