The Transform Tools

Updated on: December 5, 2014

Hello and welcome to this video series on the Gimp. Now in this video, we're gonna be covering the remaining transform tools namely the Crop Tool, the Rotate Tool, the Scale Tool, the Shear Tool, the Perspective Tool, and the Flip Tool. So let's go ahead and jump right down into this by opening up an image so we can play around with it. I got one here picked up. It's kind of a funky-looking dude here where I don't know if this is a Mohawk or a comb-over got cut in a windstorm. But in either case so, it will be just fine for our purposes. Now then the Crop tool, we got a couple of ways where we can get here and that is just as I did. Click on the icon on our toolbox or you can hold the Shift key down and tap on the letter C, as in cat, on your keyboard. That will get us here as well.

transform tools

Or up along the top here, in the menu, go to tools and remember these are all Transform tools so we go down here to Transform tools, over to Crop, and you can see the rest of the Transform tools we'll be working with here as well so you can get here for those as well. And here also on the far right, you can see the shortcut keystrokes for those. Or you can just right-click on the image and again go down to Tools and come down to Transform tools in the same thing. So that's the shortcuts and the ways in which we can get to the different Transform tools when needed. Now with Crop, basically what this is gonna do is cut a section of the image you're working with out for us to use and leaving the rest of them to the trash can. So we've got a few options here that we can work with for the Crop tool. The bottom on here, the Shrink merged and these top two are basically gonna be used if we have multiple layers that are working at the same time. Right now, we will have the one layer; this guy's image. So as far as this video is concerned, we're not gonna be touching base on these three items here. Now the "Expand from Center", this is simply an additional tool to assist you in deciding what's gonna be cropped. You can do this just manually. But "Expand from Center" just as it sounds like, you find this pretty much the center of what you gonna be hanging on to.

transform tools

In this case, I just basically wanna keep his head. And so we're gonna see right around his nose here and just move this until we get pretty much what we want. Now then you just let go of the left mouse button. By the way, that's what I was doing. I was holding the left mouse button down and dragging it. You've got these markers here. You can use this to find between you selection as such. Then again, play around with this until you're comfy with it because I am not gonna want all of these. I just want the head, not as much as the tie and the hairdo. So that's the "Expand from Center". Now we've got the "Fixed" here which I'd never really messed with that limits the flexibility of which you can choose. But again, it's here for a reason so I'm sure that at some point down the line there would be a need for this so that's what that's for as to fix either based on the Aspect Ratio, which keeps everything in tune the current size, the Width, the Height, and of course, the Size. But I'd just leave that unticked. And the position is where on the image you're selection is at and these are more manual of what we're doing now. I'd rather do it the free form way gonna guess we will more flexibility. The Highlight is basically as you can see here is gray now it's not. So I'd leave that ticked. Again, that leaves you a little bit more a way to work with. Now this size, if you've got an actual dimension that you're trying to work with, then you could type this in here and eliminate some of the guess work here.

transform tools

For example, if you got 80 by 120 then hit your enter button and there you go. And that's just about right. Now if you can keep your mouse so the cursor out pretty much right in the center where you've got the move tool emblem like this guy here, the four arrows, then you can hold your left mouse button down move this anywhere within the selected region you want. And this sure will work just fine for what we want. Then once you got the area that you want on a crop selected, hit your enter button and boom, there you have it! Now then, that's the Crop and again you've got all these options here you can surround with. Now the Rotate is just like it sounds. Basically, you're gonna be rotating the image that you're working with. Now then for these remaining five tools, they're all gonna have basically the same, well except for the Flip, they're all gonna have basically the same options available. And I would suggest just leaving the default just as it is. So that way, well again for the sake of this video anyway, that's what we're gonna do. The Interpolation is really something that will come into play if you're dealing with some high-end graphics, very large pixelated, 300 plus DPI resolutions. Otherwise, for the sake of EBook creations or header/ footer type creations then you can just leave this as cubic. A quick information, what this Interpolation does is as you make your transformations with your making this larger or flipping it, or squeezing the guy's face together, while you transform it, the Gimp software is trying to determine where this particular pixel is gonna be. You know so that keeps the color as the same no matter how you squeeze his face together so that it keeps the color as blue color are the same no matter how much you stretch it apart. So the Cubic is the most accurate of these three. I'm not sure what the fourth one does but the Cubic is the most accurate of these three. But it takes a little bit longer for Gimp to figure out what where. The None is a little less accurate but it happens a lot quicker and then the Linear is as it is in the kind of the middle, it takes the best of both. It's little faster than the cubic but a little less accurate than the None if that makes any sense. Now to give you an idea as to why it is really makes no difference whatsoever, the Cubic is as far as we're working with here, again it's most accurate and when i say it's the longest, this might take a matter of say one second. Whereas the None, which is faster but less accurate, might take a 10th of the second. So again, there's really no difference for what we're gonna be using here. So we can just leave pretty much all these alone.

transform tools

Now the 15 degree down here, if you hold the control button down your keyboard, what this will do is it will allow you to rotate in 15 degree increments. So with this ticked, let's say we wanna rotate this guy's face a 90 degrees, it will do it in 15 degree increments. So if you're watching up here, you can see that it's happening in 15 degree increments. That's one way you can rotate the image you're working with and this works pretty good  too if you're working with text and say you wanna put this along this side of your EBook creation and you type out the text horizontally, then you grab your Rotate tool and you wanna flip it 90 degrees. Now you could either do so this way with this box ticked or you can type it in here 90 degrees or you can just use the slider bar here and do the same thing. And that's the Rotate tool. Now the Scale tool, I usually have never really mess with this on the toolbox because I get a little more accuracy for what I'm wanting to do because the Scale is basically changing the size. You either increasing or decreasing this size of the image. So I go up here to the Image on the menu bar and come down here to Scale Image and let's say this is the original image that we're working with right now, the original dimensions. Let's say I want 100 in the width. Well it's going to maintain the aspect ratio here so that it doesn't look and fatty. So we type in 100 and then hit Scale. Go to Image, click Scale and as you can see how it adjusted this from 120 to 150 because we increased this by 80 but it increased this automatically by 30. So that's why I use the image up here and not so much the Scale tool down here in our toolbox because it gives us a little more flexibility up here for some odd reason. Now then if for say you wanted a certain part of this guy's face right here then I've used the scale for that but then again I don't have that need very often. I'm gonna show you what I’m talking about. Okay so we got this and click on the image here.

transform tools

We're gonna make it pretty big and you can see the part that is selected, where little ants right around here. Okay so this here we just wanna keep this part of his face selected. So then we hit the enter key and boom! That's not selected. But then again I don't have the need for that very often so that's why I don't mess with whatever I'm trying to change the size of the image I always use the Image up here. There's other options you can do up here too that are not available here. And that is, let's say we wanted to transform. We could flip it, we can rotate it a 180 or 90 degrees. So that's pretty much what I would use as far as the scale tool is again you've got the ability to do so here but I find more accuracy and more abilities here under the image menu. So let's move on to the Shear tool. Now the Shear and the Perspective tool, I've find that they're most useful for making some odd-looking shapes namely shadow effect on the base of an EBook cover that you're making. Let's go ahead and click on this icon so we can get to the Shear tool rather than leaving it up the Scale tool.

transform tools

So again as I was saying, this is where you can kinda manipulate the image a little bit. Give it that little look there. And this is the Shear tool and you can get the same type of manipulation ability by using a Perspective tool only a little bit different. I'll show you what I’m talking about here. Kinda like a page turned or page flipped. That's what I found before is a people abuse the Perspective tool for those little cornered turndowns, ad type deals, and that's how they make those or a part of that anyway is to the Perspective tool. Go ahead and get back to the original here. But that's pretty much the Shear and the Perspective tool, that's just kinda manipulate the make a little more funky-looking, a better work. We've kinda made him even funnier than what he originally was.

transform tools

The last in our Transform tools is the Flip tool. And we go and click on this and again we've got two options here basically horizontal, or we gonna flip it left or right, or the vertical, or we gonna make him upside down or right-side up. So these are gonna have some pretty useful needs. The Transform tools here again the one that I've finally used the most is the Crop, the Rotate, and the Scale tool because these here and I've from time to time will use the Flip tool as well. But the Shear, Perspective those are more specialty tools that I have used in the past but not as often as these other four. So I hope you enjoyed this video on the final items in our Transform tools section and I'm sure you're gonna be able to find a good use for all these tools. So thank you very much for watching and have a great day!

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