Speedy canvas rotation

[Moonman]

I was just watching a Feng Zhu tutorial dvd in which he conducted his linework with speed and precision by using straight constrained (click+ shift)brush strokes. For the lines of angles other than vertical and horizontal he swiftly rotated the canvas with a hotkey. This is a handy trick in general as it's sometimes easier to rotate the canvas than your hand when drawing.

Apparently this can be done quite simply in painter, but I am curious to see if this function is available in photoshop.

I am aware of the 'Rotate arbitary' tool; and although it can rotate in custom increments it slows the workflow having to type in the increment in the popup each time. There is a shortcut to rotate 90 degrees clockwise and counter-clockwise, why can't there be a customised increment shortcut.

I am looking for answers! If nobody knows, I am willing to develop my own plugin to do so becuase I believe I am not the only person that would benefit. It's such a simple thing so it should be available somewhere already.

[jim b]

I came to this thread to ask this same question. I know in Painter you can rotate the canvas easily at any angle just like you would rotate a piece of paper around when it's at an awkward angle for the line you want to draw. Is there a way to do this in Photoshop?
So, sorry I don't have an answer for you, but I would like to know as well:)

[Randize]

I've been searching for this plugin too. Anyone can have our question answered please?

[Saala]

that function will be availablein CS3 if i'm not mistaken.

[Malakuko]

damn! i just bought CS2!! haha>:|

[Snarfevs]

Rotating a photoshop document has potentially insane processing overhead due to the way in which PS stores history states, zoom levels and layer data and styles. This could be avoided if the image was rendered to a transformable device context and composited and screen/pointer coordinates were transformed to match the orientation of the image, but this would probably require hardware acceleration a la quartz or aero. But I am not a programmer.

And afaik, there is no canvas rotation in CS3.

[FlipMcgee]

I don't mind if there's a sketch 'n paint mode with limited layer properties (if it's an engine or hardware issue that's keeping this feature included in upcoming versions).

I mean, you can rotate multi layer psd files in Painter or Open Canvas but not in PS itself. Doesn't make sense. Canvas rotation is practically a standard feature now, if you include 2d animation apps that have it.