- Abandon the transformation. You’ll notice that you can get
the angle of the text fairly close to the angle of the sign, but
matching the perspective requires skewing the sides of the text.
We can’t properly accomplish this on a text layer, so we’ll need
to start over.
Anytime you need to escape a transformation, you can press
the Esc key or click the in the options bar to abandon your
change. Select one of those options now.
- Change the text into a shape. To change the text into a shape
that can undergo the transformation we’re looking for, right-
click any empty area in the I ♥ Animation layer in the Layers
panel and choose Convert to Shape from the context menu.
You’ll notice that Photoshop turns the text into a vector mask,
which can now be manipulated more exactly. The outlines
you see around the text will disappear as soon as you deselect
the vector mask in the Layers panel by clicking another part
of the layer.
Once you convert the text to a shape, you can no longer edit the contents
(for example, you can’t change Automation to Girl Robots). The text is now a
drawing of type rather than actual type.
- Re-evoke the Free Transform command. Press Ctrl-T (�-T) to
once again start the Free Transform operation. This time, the
bounding box better fits the layer. Because Photoshop no lon-
ger understands the contents of the layer as text, it’s no longer
leaving room for descending letters. Reposition, resize, and re-
angle the layer, as you learned to do in Steps 4 and 5. Extend
the sides all the way to the edges of the sign. We’ll want to add
a small margin later, but for now, seeing how the edges of the
Transform bounding box and the sign line up is helpful.
- Skew the text layer to change the perspective. Hold down the
Ctrl key (� key on the Mac) and choose one of the four cor-
ners of the bounding box. (I found it easiest to start with the
upper-left corner.) When you press the Ctrl (�) key, your cur-
sor changes to a gray arrow and Photoshop allows you to move
the corners independently. Move the upper-left and lower-right
corners in, and keep adjusting the corner points until the text
appears to be at the same perspective as the sign, as shown in
Figure 8-8. You can see that leaving the text slightly wider than
how we ultimately want it is helpful for gauging the relationship
between the text layer and the sign.
Figure 8-8.
264 Lesson 8: Transform and Distort
