Transform tool
Scale and rotate with the gizmo, move the anchor, and transform several layers together or each around its own pivot.
The Transform tool (Ctrl+T) puts a box around the selection with eight handles on it. Drag a handle to scale, drag just outside a corner to rotate, and drag the yellow crosshair to move the pivot everything turns around.
Select and Transform overlap: both move layers, both multi-select with Ctrl or Shift, both nudge with the arrow keys. Only Transform draws the scale-and-rotate gizmo; only Select has a canvas right-click menu and the boolean buttons.
The gizmo
Four corner handles and four edge handles sit on the box as white squares with a blue border. Corners scale both axes at once. The handles at the middle of the top and bottom edges scale vertically only, the ones at the middle of the sides horizontally only.
The box follows the layer's own axes, so a layer you have already rotated scales along its own sides rather than along the screen: a rotated rectangle stays a rectangle.
The rotate zone is the ring just outside each corner handle: move a little further out and the cursor turns into the rotation arrows for that corner. Hovering tells you what you will get before you press, with a different cursor for vertical scale, horizontal scale, corner scale, rotation and the anchor.
The anchor
The yellow crosshair is the anchor: the point scaling and rotation happen around. It has the highest grab priority of anything on the gizmo, so it is easy to pick up even where it overlaps a handle. Dragging it moves the anchor without moving the artwork: the layer's position compensates, so nothing appears to shift.
Hold Ctrl while dragging the anchor and it snaps to the nine classic positions of the bounding box: the corners, the edge midpoints and the centre. The nine snap points are drawn while Ctrl is down.
If a small object is hard to grab because the crosshair is sitting on top of it, turn off Show Anchor. The anchor still works, it is just not drawn or grabbable.
Options
| Option | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Center Pivot | On | Scale and rotate around the anchor. Off, the pivot is the corner opposite the handle you are dragging |
| Separately | Off | With several layers selected, transform each around its own pivot instead of one shared box |
| Lock Children | Off | Children stay put while the parent moves |
| Show Anchor | On | Draw the anchor crosshair. Turn it off to make small objects easier to grab |
The name of the primary selected layer is shown at the left of the bar whenever something is selected.
Several layers at once
With Separately off (the default), one combined box wraps the whole selection and every layer orbits the shared pivot, which is how you rotate a group of objects around a common centre. Once you have rotated the group, the box keeps its rotated corners rather than snapping back to screen-aligned.
With Separately on, each layer is hit-tested and transformed against its own box, around its own anchor, with no orbiting. Scaling five buttons down to 80% each in place is a Separately job.
Modifier keys
| Shiftdrag a handle | Scale uniformly |
| Shiftrotate | Snap to 15 degree steps |
| Altdrag | Use the centre pivot for this drag, whatever Center Pivot says |
| Altdrag a layer | Leave a copy behind and drag the copy |
| Ctrldrag the anchor | Snap the anchor to the nine-point grid |
| Ctrl or Shiftclick | Add to or remove from the selection |
| Arrow keys | Nudge by one unit, or ten with Shift |
Alt is re-read on every frame of the drag, so you can press and release it mid-rotation and the pivot swaps live, with the angle recomputed so nothing jumps.
Transforming vertices
If you select vertices with the Node tool and then press Ctrl+T, the vertex selection comes with you and the gizmo wraps those points instead of the whole layer. Scaling and rotating then move the anchors and their handles together, a quick way to scale part of a path without touching the rest. Switching back to A hands the same selection back to the Node tool.
What this tool does not do
There is no shear or skew: a layer carries a position, a rotation, a scale and an anchor, and nothing else. To slant something, edit its points with the Node tool.
The gizmo is not drawn for locked or hidden layers, nor for Pixel layers: a Raster or Pixel layer gets the free-transform box described in Move tool instead.
The gizmo shows no numbers while you drag. For exact values, type them into the Transform section of the Properties panel.
Snapping applies to moving the selection, but not to scaling, rotating or dragging the anchor.