Stretch, Skew, or Distort Clip Art for Special Effects

While resizing clip art maintains the original dimensions, stretching and skewing clip art changes its appearance in just certain directions. Create special effects with stretch, skew, and distort tools. When it's wide enough, but not tall enough, or tall enough but not wide enough, stretching a piece of clip art might work better than resizing.

Skewing an image is a lot like tilting just one side almost like turning it sideways. Stretching, skewing, or otherwise distorting an image often gives it a cartoonish effect, which can be appropriate in some publications and helps to emphasize through exaggeration. As with resizing, stretching bitmap images should be down with care.

When intentionally distorting an object with a familiar, expected shape such as a basketball or a clip art image of the Mona Lisa, make the distortion obvious otherwise it may simply appear to be a mistake rather than an effect done on purpose.