Tip Tuesday: Moving an Object and Transforming It

Sometimes you might want to move something in an image, such as a ball, but in order for it to look realistic in its new position, you may need to change its size or angle. Maybe, you think that reaching for the Clone Stamp tool is the best way. While the Clone Stamp can certainly do this task, there’s a faster way: the Content-Aware Move tool (nested with the Spot Healing Brush tool [J] in the Toolbar). Last issue, we discussed how to use the Content-Aware Move tool to reposition something in an image and have Photoshop blend it into its new location and fix the hole from where you moved it. There’s a really important setting, though, that I wanted to give as a tip for this issue. When you use this tool, make sure you turn on Transform on Drop up in the Options Bar. Now you can scale and rotate the object before applying it, so it looks correct in its new position.