Step and Repeat

Hello, TipSquirrel back again. I really shouldn’t go at the end of the week. Three brilliant posts, thank you Firgs, Simon and Janine!

Today another of those little things in Photoshop that you may not have used before, or often, Step and Repeat.

This week I wanted to make a dartboard so I needed to separate a circle into 20 equal parts. My first thought was to head over to Illustrator of course but that wouldn’t write a Photoshop blog-post now would it?

So here we are, in Photoshop and I’m going to use the step and repeat to draw 10 lines, equally spaced as a basis for my dartboard.

First off I draw a line using the shape Line tool.

With the Shape layer mode selected up at the top

So here we have one line on a shape layer.

Next I press Ctrl+Alt+T on the PC Cmd+Alt+t on the Mac

Normally when I transform I’d just press Ctrl+T but by adding in the Alt key this makes a copy of what is being transformed.

I know I want 10 lines, 20 segments. So 360 degrees in the circle divided by 20 segments equals 18 degrees.

So, back up to the top and input the degrees;

And this swings the copy line round

Press Enter to accept the degree change, then Enter again to accept the transformation

Now comes the easy bit;

To repeat the transform I’d press Shift+Ctrl+T or Shift+Cmd+T but, I want a copy again, so I’ll add in the modifier key, our old friend the Alt key.

So pressing Shift+Ctrl+Alt+T or Shift+Cmd+Alt+T I copy and transform again.

Doing this another 8 times means I end up with 10 lines, evenly spaced. All ready, after a little rotate of the lot, to become dartboard.

 

This works with any transformation, and doesn’t have to be around the layer’s centre.

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