Rotate Tool
The Rotate Tool allows you to rotate your image while you are editing it. This is not particularly useful for general editing, but is very useful when hand painting with a brush or similar tool. When hand painting curves or lines at an awkward angle rotating the image allows this to feel more natural and achieve better quality results. This is excellent when digital painting.
Rotate Tool Options
Detailed descriptions of each tool option
Tool Presets
You can create and save a Tool Preset for any tool. This will remember settings that you choose. Presets for brushes are much more useful than for some tools. If you wish to use presets, you have the option of either creating a tool preset or a brush preset. Right click on the Tool Presets button to reset the tool to default settings.
Rotation Angle
This displays the angle of rotation. You can enter a number as well.
Image Rotation Dial
Click and drag on the hand of the dial to change the rotation.
Reset View
Click to reset the view back to no rotation.
Rotate All Windows
If this is selected, when you rotate an image, it will rotate all open images.
How to use the Rotate Tool
If you have a keyboard, you don't need to select the Rotate Tool from the Toolbar. Instead, press the R key, then click and drag on the image to rotate it.
Instead of clicking on Reset View button, just press the Esc button (top left corner of the keyboard).
Step 1
Select the Rotate Tool on the Toolbar, it shares the button with the Hand Tool. The visible tool will be the last one used.
Step 2
Click on your image and drag to rotate.
You can also click and drag the Rotation Dial.
To reset the image back to no rotation, either click on the Reset View button or press the Esc key if you have a keyboard.
That's it.
How to use the Rotate Tool
Step 3
If you have multiple windows open, tick the box to "Rotate All Windows", to rotate all of the images simultaneously. Once this box is ticked, it will still apply even if using the keyboard shortcut of pressing the R key, instead of selecting the Rotate Tool from the Toolbar.
For this to be worthwhile, you would need to be able to see multiple images at the same time, so the next few steps will look at the options to view multiple images at once.
Step 4
From the Window menu, select Arrange and then your chosen option.
I have 4 images open, so I will select
4-up.
Note that 6-up is greyed out and unavailable as I only have 4 images open.
Step 5
These 4 images are all a similar size. You may need to zoom in or out on one or more images.
Step 6
Click and drag on one image to rotate it. While you click and drag you will only see the selected image rotate, but when you release the mouse button, all images will rotate the same.
Step 7
To reset the images to no rotation, either click on the Reset View button, or press the Esc key. If you have selected the box to Rotate All Windows, they will all reset together.
Summary of the Rotate Tool
The Rotate Tool allows us to rotate an image, or images. This can be very useful for things like digital painting. It's also useful anytime you want to draw smooth line or curves by hand and it's easier when the image is rotated, to allow for a more natural movement of the hand and arm.
