Transforming a copy and repeat

In this exercise, I'm going to show you one of the coolest and least known tricks inside of Photoshop. How to scale, move, and duplicate an image, and then repeat the process, because we want to create two incrementally declining copies of this martini glass. Now I'm still working inside Smaller big layer.psd, haven't done anything to it. It's found s inside the 10_layers folder. I've managed to pull one of my guidelines in the wrong place. This is your opportunity to fix that problem. I'm going to press Shift+Tab in order to bring up my right-side panels.

Then, I'm going to click the I to bring up the Info panel. To move a guide once you've placed it, you need to get the Move Tool. You can do that on the fly of course, by pressing the Control key or the Command key on the Mac. So press-and-hold Control or Command, and then move your cursor over this specific horizontal guide and drag it up. I want you to keep an eye on this Y value here inside the Info panel, drag it up until the Y value becomes 392 just as it is for me. You know what's weird; you can press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac as you're dragging a guideline to switch it to the other direction if you like.

To make a horizontal guide vertical for example or vice versa, we don't want to do that. So don't press the Alt or Option key. I just wanted to show you that you can. I swear, there is no time when Alt or Option doesn't do something inside this program. Anyway, once you get to 392, release. Then, you can release the Control key, Command key on the Mac, that's where we want this guide. Now then, let's go ahead and hide all this panel garbage by pressing Shift+Tab, and then I'm going to press F7 to bring back up the Layers panel. Make sure the glass layer is active, it is. Now you may recall, if you go to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform, let the keyboard shortcut is Control+ T on the PC, Command+T on the Mac.

Well, guess what, if you add Alt or Option, you get duplication. So let's go ahead and try that. I'm going to press Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T on the Mac, there is no command for this. You have to press the keyboard shortcut Control+Alt+T, Command+Option+T on the Mac. I'm also going click on a chain in order to maintain the aspect ratio, better known as the proportions of this layer. I'm going to change either the Width or Height value to 68% like so. Then, I'm going to go ahead and drag this layer to a new location.

And what I want you to do is align the left edge of this graphic with this guideline. Notice that guideline that is now being covered up. So there is the guideline I want you to align with. Go ahead and move this into position, and align that center target with a horizontal guideline that you just got through moving. That is the final placement of this layer. Now when I was first trying to scale and position this graphic in the first place, I didn't know this is where it would go, because I couldn't see the other martini glass, it was getting covered up. Well, you can change the Opacity of a layer on the fly if you want to, while you're in a Free Transform.

By highlighting the Opacity value, go ahead and click on it. You can't just press 5 for 50%, you have to highlight the Opacity value and change it, let's say to 50%, and then you can see through one glass to the other. Even better, if you're working with an image against the white background like this, there is a better technique. I'll go ahead and restore the Opacity value to a 100. I'll change the Blend Mode from Normal to Multiply. Then, I can see through one glass to the other. I know this is where I want it. Alright, now I'll go ahead and press the Escape key.

So Multiply is not active, darn it here on the PC. Don't press Escape on the Mac, by the way only press that Escape key, if Multiply is highlighted in the Layers Palette. You do not want to escape from your transformation operation after spending this much time on it. What you do want to do is press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac in order to accept that modification. You've now put that martini glass exactly where it wants to go. What I would suggest you do at this point, is rename this layer. I'm going to go ahead and call it glass 2, like so.

I'm going to move it below the first glass; glass one, now gets covered up though. So let's go back to glass. That's the file number for this image in the Fotolia image library. Then I'll go back up to the Blend Mode pop-up menu and I'll choose Multiply, so that I am seeing the glasses exactly the way I want to see them. Now click on glass 2 here inside the Layers Palette to make it active. I'm going to press the F7 key in order to hide the Layers panel. Here is where the magic happens. There is a command under the Edit menu.

You go down to Transform, and it's called Again, Transform>Again. So the idea as you repeat the last transformation, it has a keyboard shortcut of Control+Shift+T, Command+Shift+T on the Mac. What happens if you add Alt to that? I wonder. Well, again, there is no command for what I'm about to show you. You have to match your fist on the keyboard. So here we go. Press Ctrl+Shift and Alt at the same time on the PC or Command+Shift and Option on the Mac and press T. So Control+Shift +Alt+T or Command+Shift+Option+T on the Mac will go ahead and repeat that duplication.

So it'll move the graphic the same amount proportionally. It'll scale the graphic another 68 %, and it'll duplicate it as well. We now have a series of evenly declining translucent martini glasses inside our composition.