One of the niftier tools in Photoshop is the Transform tool. With it you can change the size of an object, distort it as well as skew, distort, rotate, and perspective. So, if perspective is already built into Photoshop, why would anyone want to purchase an extra tool for something they already have?

The answer is that Perspective takes it to the next step. In Photoshop, perspective only provides equal constraining to the edges of an image. That is if you take the lower right corner of an image and drag upward, the upper right part of the same image will equally be brought down providing the illusion of the image being seen in perspective.

However, to take this image to the next step where it would look like it appears to be on the side of a building, one needs to futz with the image and the various controls of Transform, and the result may start to make the image very distorted.

If one already has a building to drag the corners of your image to so the result looks like a major billboard, all is well. But if you are trying to make a box from scratch or other subtle constructs, creating perspective from scratch can be very difficult.

Here's where Perspective is a winner, well almost.

Opening up in it's own window (not resizable), Perspective lets you move and rotate your image like a plane of glass. The one big problem I had was I wanted to move the glass plane (the image), but Perspective wants you to move the "camera" looking at the image. That is, when you press on the top arrow (highlighted gold in the image above), I wanted to move the top of my image back. Instead, Perspective rotates the camera up. Similarly, when you click on the small, internal arrow (just below the gold arrow seen above) it doesn't make the image smaller, rather it makes the image larger.

There are a number of presets and one can use either generic views or your image. See the image below for a split screen I created showing both options. You can select from amongst four general categories of image types and you can save any custom set up and/or load a previous saved setup.

By clicking on the check mark you go back to the Perspective window seen two images above, by canceling (the null icon) you also go to the Perspective window but nothing is changed.

As much as I like what Perspective can do, I found it very frustrating to deal/work with. Aside from finding the interface backwords to how I wanted to work with an image, my biggest problem with Perspective is the lack of any ability to enter numbers for degree rotations. That is, if I wanted to rotate an image 23° CW--nope, can't be done. I can rotate to what I think might be 23°, but that's as good as it gets.

As close to this as you can get is the set of controls in the bottom right of the main window:

The very top bar is to zoom in and out (no percent values here). Below that, the grid provides a menu of standard camera positions. That is "High Top," "Low Right," etc. It provides only basic big movement. The second button showing a circle provides only rotation in 90° amounts. The last button provides rotation around the "z" axis in 20° amounts. That is, you can select from such options as "Swing the camera to 40° left."

The limitation of this is that if you want to make a box and calculate how the pieces will join together, it can't be done. At least not mathematically--you have to use eyeball and trial & error.

I also wanted to click on the image and drag it around to the proper orientation--nope can't do that either. Or perhaps click off to the side as one can with Photoshop's Transform tool and rotate the image. Nope, can't be done. All maneuvering must be done with the arrow heads to the right of the image.

In short, I found working in Perspective, well, short. It can easily perform perspective and rotations that can be somewhat complicated directly in Photoshop. However there is not enough sophistication to make this a tool beyond simple activities. Also, I keep on wanting to move the image, not the camera looking at the image--I'd like to see this as a preference.

• RedEyePro Filter
• LensDoc Filter
• ScatterLight Lenses
• VariFocus Filter

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