Transformation draw tool

TRANSFORM is a drawing tool for manipulating parts of raster images.

A rectangular region of an image was selected and is being scaled down.

Transformation configuration panel

The configuration panel of the Transform tool controls what kind of transformation can be applied to the selected content.

When Move, resize and rotate is active, the floating selection can be moved by dragging it with mouse or with arrow keys. It can be resized by dragging the control handles positioned around the rectangle or by holding down SHIFT and using the arrow keys. The selection can be rotated using the red control handle.

If the Preserve aspect ratio option is checked, the resized rectangle maintains its proportions.

When Perspective transformation is selected, the selected rectangle can be mapped on arbitrary quadrangle by dragging the control handles in the corners of the rectangle.

Using Transformation tool

Creating floating selection

There are multiple ways how to create the floating selection for the Transformation tool to manipulate:

1. Activate the tool and then select a rectangular region on the canvas by pressing the mouse button in one corner, moving the mouse, and releasing the button in the opposite corner.
2. If an image selection exists (it created using one of the select tools), switching to Transform tool automatically creates a floating selection from the normal selection. The selection does not need to be rectangular.
3. In an image is on the clipboard, pasting it automatically activates the Transform tool and uses the image from the clipboard to initialize the floating selection.
4. Press CTRL+A or activate the Select all command to turn the content of the active layer into a floating selection.

Manipulating the floating selection

Once the floating selection exists, it can be manipulated:

1. Apply transformations to the floating selection by dragging its control handles or by using arrow keys.
2. Apply image filters to the floating selection from the Adjust or Effect menus.
3. Crop the image to the floating selection by right-clicking and picking Crop to selection in the context menu.
4. Copy the floating selection to clipboard using CTRL+C, SHIFT+INSERT or from the main menu.
5. Delete the floating selection by pressing the DELETE key.

Scripting parameters

TRANSFORM tool can be used from scripts. The command in script must have 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 12 parameters:

if the command has 6, 9, or 12 parameters, the first four define the affected rectangle. In other cases, the whole image is affected.

In case of 2 (or 6) parameters, the offset is given.

In case of 5 (or 9) parameters, the offset, scale, and rotation angle in degrees is given.

In case of 8 (or 12) parameters, pairs of number define corners or a quadrangle for perspective transformation.

Example

// scale the entire image to half and rotate it by 45 degrees
DrawTool.TRANSFORM(Document, 0, 0, 0.5, 0.5, 45);

See also: DrawTool object, Document object

Recent comments

LoganDark registered user on April 6th

Best tool ever!

thanks vlasta

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Anonymous

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