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The
Graphics Muse Tools
TransGFX |
On this page you'll find everything you need to know in order to get started with and make the most use of ArrowGFX. Once you've gotten the hang of this plug-in, be sure to check out the other GFXMuse Tools plug-ins:
Table of ContentsUsing TransGFX is fairly easy. There
are a number of features you can modify. Starting with the upper
left of the dialog window you will find the Rotation
Angle Preview. This is an interactive display that
you can use to adjust the angle to rotate the active selection or layer.
We'll talk more about this in a moment.
To the right of the Preview is a framed box titled Disposition of Rotation. In this box are two toggle buttons, one labeled New Layer and one labeled Anchor To Original. Right before a rotation is performed a floating selection is created. These toggles determine the disposition of that floating layer after the rotation has completed.
Below these toggles is a button labeled Smooth Jagged Edges. If selected this will cause the rotated floating selection to have its edges smoothed (also known as anti-aliased). The effect of this smoothing is not obvious in all rotations so you may need to experiment with it to find out if its needed or not.
Following the Smooth button are two options:
a blend mode menu and an opacity
slider with text input field. The menu, slider and text field are
only applicable if the New Layer toggle is currently set. If the
Anchor to Original toggle is set then these features become unselectable.
If a new layer is chosen then its initial blend mode and opacity level
are set according to the option menu and slider setting, respectively.
Underneath the Preview is a text input field with two arrow buttons.
The text input field shows the current rotation angle, from -359 to +359
degrees. When you rotate the box in the preview window this field
is automatically updated. Alternatively, you can type the angle directly
into this field. The arrow buttons allow adjustments of 1/1000 of
a degree.
Finally, the layer to use as the source for your rotation can be selected from the Layer menu below the arrow buttons.
Interactively changing the rotation angle
The Preview window can be modified by clicking
inside the frame and dragging the mouse in any direction. As you
drag the white box will rotate within the black circular outline, with
the dotted line always pointing to where the current selection's/layer's
upper right corner will be after the rotation.
When the left moues button is clicked and held, mouse drag operations cause
large changes in the angle of rotation. You can modify this by using
the Shift and CTRL keys. Holding the Shift key down while you drag
will decrease the angle rotation by 1/3rd, the CTRL key will decrease it
by 1/6th and holding both down will decrease it by 1/10th. This should
provide fairly reasonable levels of granularity in the rotation, with even
finer levels achieved by using the arrow buttons.
Along the bottom of the dialog are 5 buttons: OK, Cancel, Reset, Show Status, and Help. The Help button opens the Help dialog and displays this text. The Show Status button will open a window similar to the Help window that shows the current status of the TransGFX plug-in as it performs its rotation of a layer or selection. Both the Help and Show Status windows can be closed by clicking on the same dialog button again or by clicking on those dialogs Close buttons.
All fields and original settings of the dialog can be reset with the Reset button. Clicking on this button also will refresh the Layer menu to show all the layers in the current image (the image from which the TransGFX dialog was opened). This is useful for doing rotations of layers that have just been created by TransGFX.
Performing the rotation and closing the dialog
To perform a rotation simply click on the OK button. You need not make any changes to any other part of the dialog before doing so. In this case, you will simply get a new layer that contains either the current selection or a copy of the active layer.
The TransGFX dialog does not close automatically. It will remain open so you can peform multiple rotations if you desire. To close the dialog, simply click on the Cancel button.
TransGFX will add either 3 or 4 operations
to the Undo stack. To get back to where you where prior to the rotation
you can type CTRL-Z three times (if a selection was already present previously)
or 4 times (if no selection was present).