Rotate, flip and step and repeat in Paint by Zaweba
Use Edit > Transform modes, fixed rotations and flips, whole-canvas Image Rotation and Transform Again with a copy for step and repeat in Paint by Zaweba.
Free Transform does almost everything, but sometimes you want one particular change and nothing else to get in the way. Edit > Transform in Paint by Zaweba gives each kind of change its own mode, adds one-click rotations and flips, and offers Transform Again for repeating a change, which is the basis of step and repeat.
One mode at a time
Edit > Transform has Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, Perspective and Warp. Choosing one locks the box to that kind of change. In Scale, the handles only scale. In Perspective, dragging a corner moves its partner too.
This is safer than a free box when precision matters. Fitting artwork to a sign with Perspective, you cannot accidentally rotate it. Straightening a picture with Rotate, you cannot accidentally resize it.
Fixed rotations and flips
The same menu has Rotate 180, Rotate 90 CW and Rotate 90 ACW, plus Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical. These act on the current layer at once with no handles.
Flipping a layer horizontally is one of the most common small jobs. A person in a photo faces off the edge of a design, and flipping makes them face inwards. A shadow falls the wrong way for the light in a composite. A logo needs a mirror image for a reflection. Just watch out for text or numbers in the picture, which will read backwards.
Turning the whole canvas
Image > Image Rotation is different: it turns the entire canvas, all layers together, by 180 degrees, by 90 degrees either way or by any angle, and can flip the whole canvas. Use it when a photo came off the camera sideways or a scan went in upside down. Rotating by an arbitrary angle is useful for straightening a whole scanned page.
Remember the difference. Edit > Transform changes a layer. Image > Image Rotation changes the document.
Transform Again
Transform Again, on Ctrl+Shift+T, repeats the last box transform. Rotate a layer by 10 degrees, then press Ctrl+Shift+T and it rotates by another 10. Scale by 90 percent, repeat, and it shrinks again by the same step.
Step and repeat
Again with a Copy duplicates the layer first and then applies the transform. Press it several times and you get a row of copies, each moved, turned or scaled a step further than the last.
This is a quick way to make patterns and radial designs. Move a dot 40 pixels to the right with Free Transform, then use Again with a Copy and you have an evenly spaced row. Rotate a petal shape 30 degrees about a reference point at the flower's centre, repeat with a copy eleven times and you have a full flower. Combine a small rotation with a small scale and the copies spiral inwards.
For anything evenly spaced, step and repeat is more accurate than dragging copies by eye, and it is easy to undo if the step was wrong.
A layer facing the wrong way: Flip Horizontal. A sideways photo: Image Rotation 90. Exactly one kind of change: a mode from Edit > Transform. Lots of equal steps: Transform Again, or Again with a Copy.
Traps
Flipping a layer that contains writing. Rotating a single layer when you meant to rotate the whole picture, or the other way round. Using step and repeat on a pixel layer and getting a slightly softer result with each scaled copy; shapes stay crisp, so build repeated patterns from shapes where you can.
These commands are small, but in Paint by Zaweba they turn repetitive placement into a few key presses.
