Canvas Rotation

Growing up, I had a series of pretty good art teachers. One teacher's favourite exercise was to study an object or scene, then blindfold yourself and draw it upside down. In one case, we were looking at an old Victorian style house, then on went the blindfolds and we started drawing. We started from the roof and worked our way to the foundation. But, the roof was located on the bottom of our paper ... then working up the page to the foundation. It's a great way to train.

Later on, as I would fill in the details (blind-fold off), I found myself spinning the paper around to get the proper angle for shading and whatnot.

I find myself doing the same things now, spinning my Wacom tablet to get a mask's edge just right, and so forth. So what does this have to do with the upcoming release of CS4?

Great question. The answer is ... canvas rotation.

The new Rotate-To-View feature allows you to rotate your canvas to any angle to ease the creative process - without changing the angle of your tablet or your body. Now, I know what you are thinking ... the old interpolation issue - rotating on an odd angle causes problems and new pixels to be created - leading to unwanted blur and destroying the image. Not to worry, Adobe's playing tricks with the pixel grid. 

How? Why? We'll go over this and much more CS4 stuff in depth in the future.

Until then, enjoy.