A quick little tutorial for photoshop this time (sorry, doesn’t work in pixelmator yet, but let’s hope they add this function in some time as well).
Here’s what we’re gonna do with just one shape, without manually rotating and positioning them.
Read more to find out how we do it!
First let’s create a 600×600 pixels image and fill the background with black like so :
Then let’s make a simple rectangle shape on a new layer and fill it with a color of our choice like this:
Now this is a little tricky. See that cross in the center of this object while using the move tool ? (if you don’t check two things : press CTRL + H or Option + H on a mac and if you don’t still see it turn on the “Transform controls” checkbox at the top of your screen in the tool settings) Ok let’s grab this center cross with the move tool while holding the ALT key. You can then also start holding the shift key to move it in a straight line, or just go crazy and move it manually. Ok so we got this little bugger, what next ? Well let’s move it down a bit like this:
As you can see it has become the center of our rotation. So let’s rotate the object a little bit (just once) to define how much it should rotate. After we’re done let’s press enter to apply the transoformation (in this case the transformation is simply the rotation) and now comes the tricky part. Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + T (yeah, I know it’s a lot of keys) a couple of times and as you can see the object gets duplicated. If you’re on a MAC like me press Command + Alt + Shift + T (usually the command key serves as a Ctrl key on a mac so that’s a safe guess).
As you can see photoshop is repeating that same action until you quit pressing that key. When you get to the point you’ve started it’s best to stop pressing the key because it might get messy with the overlapping objects.
That’s easy right ? So now let’s add a new layer and draw a triangle, but not a straight one, a more wacky one that’s not really even and not really aligned in any specific way. And let’s do the same by setting the rotation point somewhere on the bottom edge of the triangle (so it’s not “below” it. It can be even on it for some interesting results)
And I hope you remember now. Ctrl + Alt + Shift + T on a PC. Command + Alt + Shift + T on a mac. Push that combo a couple of times and you have yourself a star.
Ok now let’s add some text in the middle and let’s wrap it up. This is a very, very basic example of what you can do with that key combination. But you can do more complex shapes and different rotation point positions. So go and experiment right now! Be creative!
