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Crop and rotate your composites

Learn how to easily crop and rotate an active layer or the contents of a selection in Photoshop on the iPad.

Cropping is easy with Photoshop on the iPad. The crop tool lets you eliminate unwanted edges of a photo and helps you improve the overall composition. You can crop constrained or free-form, and also rotate your selection while you crop. 

How to crop and rotate a selection

You can crop and rotate an active layer, or the contents of a selection. To make a layer active, tap the layer thumbnail from the taskbar. To proceed with crop and rotate, do the following: 

  1. Tap  from the toolbar to select the crop tool. In the Crop and rotate mode, a bounding box appears around your active layer or selection.

  2. Drag any of the handles of the bounding box and release to set the crop size. You can view the crop size at the top of the Crop and rotate mode. By default, the crop tool lets you perform free-form crop around the reference handle. For alternate crop actions, see Touch shortcuts.

  3. Move the rotation dial that appears below the bounding box to freely rotate your layer or selection. While rotating, the crop size remains unchanged. For alternate rotation actions, see Touch shortcuts.

  4. Apply touch gestures to pan, zoom, and reset your layer or selection in the Crop and rotate mode.

  5. Tap the undo () icon to revert the last action performed. Tap the redo () icon to restore the undone action.

  6. Tap Done to apply your crop and rotate actions. Your active layer or selection scales to fit the crop size and rotation angle. Tap Cancel to exit the Crop and rotate mode.

    Crop and rotate photos in Photoshop on mobile
    Set your crop size and rotation angle in the Crop and rotate mode.

Use touch shortcuts

While using the crop tool, you can activate the primary touch shortcut to apply constrained crop around the reference handle, and activate the secondary touch shortcut to apply constrained crop scale from center. 

While using the rotation action, you can activate the primary touch shortcut to snap rotation in every 15°.

To learn more about how to use the touch shortcuts, see Touch shortcuts and gestures.

Touch shortcuts for Brush tool
Left: Primary touch shortcut. Right: Secondary touch shortcut.

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