Growing up, I was always a Paint Shop Pro and Microsoft Paint girl. I never used Photoshop, but last year I finally bought the Adobe Creative Cloud and have since indulged in all of its glorious programs. As excited as I was to plunge into  Photoshop, I found that there were a lot of basic commands and tasks I wanted to carry out in the program that weren’t necessarily the most intuitive for a Photoshop newbie. I plan to share these encounters as I come across them on my blog.

One of these basic tasks was rotating an object. Typically, I would simply grab one of the sets of points available on the original selection and rotate my image around. Not so with Photoshop. Here are the steps to rotating an object within Adobe Photoshop CC 2017.

Rotate an Object Layer

Step 1. Select your layer.

Make sure that you have selected the actual layer you want to rotate.

Step 2. Edit → Transform/Transform Path

In your main navigation bar, select Edit > Transform or Transform Path. From there you can choose to rotate your layer 180°, 90° clockwise or counter-clockwise, or you can select Rotate to manually adjust your layer.

Step 3. Use the Keyboard Shortcut.

The short-cut key command is Command + T for Mac users or Control + T for Windows users.

Rotate the Whole Canvas

Method 1. Rotate View Tool

Under the Hand Tool, you will find the Rotate View Tool. Once you select this, you can hold a click while dragging your mouse to rotate the entire canvas.

Method 2. Image → Image Rotation

In the main navigation bar, select Image and then Image Rotation. From there, you have a lot of options to choose from that will rotate your entire canvas, including 180°, 90° clockwise or counter-clockwise, and arbitrary, which allows you to designate your own angle.

Video Tutorial: