Transform tool
Scale and rotate with the gizmo, move the anchor, skew, bend into perspective, distort or warp, and transform several layers together or each around its own pivot.
The Transform tool (Ctrl+T) puts a box around the selection with eight handles on it. Drag a handle to scale, drag just outside a corner to rotate, and drag the yellow crosshair to move the pivot everything turns around.
Select and Transform overlap: both move layers, both multi-select with Ctrl or Shift, both nudge with the arrow keys. Only Transform draws the scale-and-rotate gizmo and has the Skew, Perspective, Distort and Warp modes; only Select has the boolean buttons. Both open the same canvas menu on a right-click, both show the selected layer's motion path, and on both a right-click on one of its keys opens that key's menu.
The gizmo
Four corner handles and four edge handles sit on the box as white squares with a blue border. Corners scale both axes at once. The handles at the middle of the top and bottom edges scale vertically only, the ones at the middle of the sides horizontally only.
The box follows the layer's own axes, so a layer you have already rotated scales along its own sides rather than along the screen: a rotated rectangle stays a rectangle.
The rotate zone is the ring just outside each corner handle: move a little further out and the cursor turns into the rotation arrows for that corner. Hovering tells you what you will get before you press, with a different cursor for vertical scale, horizontal scale, corner scale, rotation and the anchor.
The anchor
The yellow crosshair is the anchor: the point scaling and rotation happen around. It has the highest grab priority of anything on the gizmo, so it is easy to pick up even where it overlaps a handle. Dragging it moves the anchor without moving the artwork: the layer's position compensates, so nothing appears to shift.
Hold Ctrl while dragging the anchor and it snaps to the nine classic positions of the bounding box: the corners, the edge midpoints and the centre. The nine snap points are drawn while Ctrl is down.
If a small object is hard to grab because the crosshair is sitting on top of it, turn off Show Anchor. The anchor still works, it is just not drawn or grabbable.
Options
| Option | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Mode | Free | What the handles do: Free, Skew, Perspective, Distort or Warp. See Modes below |
| Center Pivot | On | Scale and rotate around the anchor. Off, the pivot is the corner opposite the handle you are dragging |
| Separately | Off | With several layers selected, transform each around its own pivot instead of one shared box |
| Lock Children | Off | Children stay put while the parent moves |
| Show Anchor | On | Draw the anchor crosshair. Turn it off to make small objects easier to grab |
| Motion Path | On | Shows the selected layer's motion path in Animate mode, the same setting as the Move tool's. Greyed out in Edit mode |
The name of the primary selected layer is shown at the left of the bar whenever something is selected.
Modes
| Mode | What the handles do |
|---|---|
| Free | Scale and rotate, as described above |
| Skew | An edge handle slides its edge along itself, so the box leans over and stays a parallelogram |
| Perspective | A corner moves along its edge and the corner at the other end of that edge moves the opposite way, so the box narrows toward one side |
| Distort | Each corner goes wherever you drag it. An edge handle moves both corners of its edge |
| Warp | A grid of sixteen points bends the picture. You grab the four corners, each with two handles along its edges, and a corner carries its handles with it. The four inner points follow when you drag the picture itself, which bends it from the spot you grabbed |
With a pixel selection live on a Raster Cells or Pixel layer, the modes reshape the selected pixels. The result is only drawn into the layer when you apply it, and until then every change is resampled from the original pixels, so going back and forth costs no quality.
On floating pixels, a corner handle in Skew mode slides that one corner along its edge, and an edge handle in Perspective mode slides its edge the way Skew does. Hold Alt while you drag a Skew edge to lean the box around its middle; on a whole layer it leans around the anchor.
Without a pixel selection, the modes reshape the whole selected layer, whatever its type, and leave its artwork untouched. Skew is stored as the layer's Skew X and Skew Y; Perspective, Distort and Warp are stored as its Distort. Both show up in the Properties panel and on the Timeline and can be keyframed like any other property. Distort ▸ Reset in Properties takes the whole distortion off again.
Skew and Distort have auto-key channels of their own, both armed by default, in Edit ▸ Auto-Key Channels and the Timeline's auto-key popup.
Floating pixels
While a pixel selection is up on a Raster Cells or Pixel layer, the bar adds Anti-alias, Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, Apply and Cancel, and greys out Center Pivot, Separately, Lock Children and Show Anchor. Apply and Cancel wake up once the pixels are lifted, which the first drag, arrow key, flip or typed value does. Enter applies and Esc cancels as well. With Anti-alias off the pixels are placed pixel-sharp, which is what pixel art wants; in Pixel Mode they always are.
As long as the box is still a parallelogram, the W, H, Rotation and Skew X fields on the bar show it in numbers, and typing into them changes it. W and H are percentages of the lifted pixels' own size, and Skew X runs from -85 to 85 degrees. After a perspective or a warp there is no single size or angle to show, so the fields grey out.
The box around floating pixels is a thin blue outline with small white handles: squares at the corners, dots at the middle of each edge and a round knob above the top edge for rotating. It looks the same in every mode, and it stays visible over light artwork. The canvas edge is hidden while pixels are being transformed, so it cannot be mistaken for part of the box.
Several layers at once
With Separately off (the default), one combined box wraps the whole selection and every layer orbits the shared pivot, which is how you rotate a group of objects around a common centre. Once you have rotated the group, the box keeps its rotated corners rather than snapping back to screen-aligned.
With Separately on, each layer is hit-tested and transformed against its own box, around its own anchor, with no orbiting. Scaling five buttons down to 80% each in place is a Separately job.
Modifier keys
| Shiftdrag a handle | Scale uniformly |
| Shiftrotate | Snap to 15 degree steps |
| Altdrag | Use the centre pivot for this drag, whatever Center Pivot says |
| Altdrag a layer | Leave a copy behind and drag the copy |
| Ctrldrag the anchor | Snap the anchor to the nine-point grid |
| Ctrl or Shiftclick | Add to or remove from the selection |
| Arrow keys | Nudge by one unit, or ten with Shift |
| Ctrldrag a corner | On floating pixels: distort, in any mode |
| Ctrldrag an edge | On floating pixels: move that edge freely, in any mode |
| Shiftdrag inside floating pixels | Keep the move on one axis |
| CtrlShiftdrag an edge | On floating pixels: skew, in any mode |
| CtrlAltShiftdrag a corner | On floating pixels: perspective, in any mode |
Alt is re-read on every frame of the drag, so you can press and release it mid-rotation and the pivot swaps live, with the angle recomputed so nothing jumps.
Transforming vertices
If you select vertices with the Node tool and then press Ctrl+T, the vertex selection comes with you and the gizmo wraps those points instead of the whole layer. Scaling and rotating then move the anchors and their handles together, a quick way to scale part of a path without touching the rest. The box follows your drag on screen, also on a rotated layer, in a rotated or flipped view, and with points selected on several shapes at once. Points on a shape's inner contours count toward the box. With a single point selected there is nothing to scale or rotate, so no box is drawn. Switching back to A hands the same selection back to the Node tool.
What this tool does not do
The gizmo is not drawn for locked or hidden layers, or for the Camera. While a pixel selection is up on a Raster Cells or Pixel layer, the selection's own box takes its place: see Floating pixels.
The gizmo shows no numbers while you drag. For exact values, type them into the Transform section of the Properties panel.
Snapping applies to moving the selection, but not to scaling, rotating or dragging the anchor.
A distorted or warped layer is still picked by clicking inside its box as it was before the distortion.