As powerful as Photoshop is, there is little about the program that is obvious. Case in point: How do you rotate a layer? Right-click on it and select Rotate? Choose Rotate from the Layer menu? Click on the rotate tool? The answer is no, no, and no. Fortunately, there’s the Free Transform command, which lets you not just rotate but also scale, slant, and distort a layer in one continuous operation. Edt > Free Transform is one of Photoshop’s most fundamental commands, with a keyboard shortcut to prove it: Ctrl+T (Cmd-T on the Mac).

You know my favorite thing about this video? It features a piece of chapter-opening artwork that Colleen Wheeler and I created for our most recent book, Photoshop Elements 8 One-on-One. Which just came out! I mean, what are the odds that this Photoshop Top 40 video and that book make their debuts within a few days of each other? And just in time for the holidays? It’s like we’re some kind of evil corporate marketing machine, and yet we’re really just a handful of loosely organized people paying scant attention to what we’re doing. I love it!

As usual, the 3D rendering of the adorable green-and-white robot comes to us from image vendor Fotolia. This happens to be image #7010536 from artist Leo Blanchette. Click this link for a special deal.

(For a list of all Photoshop Top 40 videos thus far, click here.)

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