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A collaboration between the Exploratorium, MAKE Magazine, and Pixar Animation Studios, Open MAKE is a monthly program highlighting the tools, techniques, and ingenuity of local Makers. Visitors are invited to participate in tinkering and making activities inside the Tinkering Studio, where Makers from around the Bay Area will share their work.
This month’s theme was tools.
Photo by Gayle Laird © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu
Photoshop Tip: Rotation
The usual way I rotate an image is below. But I just found a better way. Firstly, the old method:
1. Select the Move tool.
2. Hit CTRL + A to select all the image.
3. Now you can hover over the corners to drag and rotate the image.
See the problem? The image is cut off at the sides due to the rotation. The trick was to enlarge the canvas first - enough to allow for the rotation you need. I usually add 1000 pixels to the width and to the height.
You can then safely rotate the image. But.... it will have to be cropped afterwards, to get rid of all the white space around it you added when you enlarged the canvas. I have cropped images this way for years, until I finally realised the simple solution to simply this:
I noticed that if you use the Canvas Custom rotation menu, it adds enough white space on all sides to allow the whole image to show. But that only works if you know beforehand how many degrees the image has to be rotated by. (You have to enter a value for the Canvas Custom rotation to work.)
But wait! All you need to do is follow the steps above for manually rotating the image, but stop there. Make a note of the angle you see in Photoshop, then simply cancel the rotation, go to the Canvas Custom menu and enter the value you saw before. Voila! Photoshop rotates the image and adds enough space to prevent cropping. Why didn't I think of this before?
The image you see here has been rotated using my new method above. I've left in the white space so you can see how it ends up. Normally I would also crop the edges on all sides to hide the white space.
More tips:
1. While you are manually rotating an image, if you're not sure if it is properly rotated or not, move a toolbar over a straight edge in your image (if there is one) such as the edge of a pavement or a lamppost. The Tools toolbar is ideal for vertical alignments, while I have the Layers palette on screen at all times, which is ideal for horizontal alignments. What's more you can stretch it to cover a wider area.
2. If an image would be hard to crop easily after rotating it, you can hide the rotation by making it into a circular image! Use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to select a circular area you want to keep. (Hold down the SHIFT key to keep it a proper circle and not an ellipse.) Now right-click and choose Select Inverse. From there CTRL + X will take out the areas around the circle. The result can then be rotated as much as you like! No-one will know it has been rotated because it is always circular! Just remember to crop it so the circle fits neatly into a white square. If you look through my photos, you'll see some examples of this trick!
My newest tool - a double sided ruler with my business names printed on each side, for size reference shots. The handmade side.
Andrea Mitchell shows journalists through Act III of the mobile unit, where visitors learn highlights of the tools and technologies that farmers use in modern production agriculture.
Graindale performing at Cassiopeia Live Club, Stuttgart, Germany, 2012-03-24 - Jocki´s 50th birthday
First you poke a few holes, and then scissors can get in. The idea is to ring the bottom of each plastic receptacle with enough holes to allow feed to flow out when the tray gets empty.
This is the end of a tapping tool, for threading the ends of a piece of extruded aluminum with holes of the correct sizes.
Housewarming gift from Dad. Got a wicked steal on the combo kit from Home Depot. Usually $200 for each tool. Got them together for only $200! Used them almost every day over the past 3 weeks.