Corner Pin
Drag the four corners independently for perspective and screen fits.
Corner Pin gives you four handles, one per corner, each moving on its own. The layer stretches to fit whatever quadrilateral you make.
This is how you put artwork onto a surface that is not facing you: a phone screen in a photo, a billboard at an angle, a card lying on a table.
When to reach for it#
- Fitting a design into a screen or frame in a photograph.
- Faking perspective on flat artwork.
- Floor and wall projections — narrow the far edge, widen the near one.
How it works#
Each corner stores a pixel offset from where that corner of the layer box would normally be. All eight numbers at zero means no change. The interior is interpolated across the quad, so a straight line through the middle of the layer stays straight but changes angle.
Every offset is keyframable independently, which is what makes it work for tracking — set the corners at the start and end of a camera move and let them interpolate.
Parameters#
Pixel offset for the top-left corner. Negative X pulls it left, negative Y pulls it up.
Same for the top-right corner. Pull the two top corners toward each other and the top edge narrows, which reads as the top leaning away from you.
Bottom-right corner.
Bottom-left corner. Move the bottom pair apart while narrowing the top and you get a floor plane.
Recipes#
Artwork on a tilted screen
- Place the photo of the device as a layer underneath.
- Put your artwork on top and roughly size it to the screen.
- Add Corner Pin and drag each corner onto the matching corner of the screen in the photo.
- Work opposite corners in pairs — top-left then bottom-right — so the shape stays balanced while you converge.
Zoom in for the last few pixels. Corner accuracy is the entire illusion; being 3 px out on one corner is what makes a composite look pasted on.
Things that catch people out#
Lines through the middle stay straight, but a texture does not foreshorten the way a real camera would — even spacing stays even. For a shallow tilt nobody can tell. For a steep one, put the layer in a 3D workspace instead.
Drag the top-left past the top-right and the quad turns inside out. It will render, and it will look wrong. Reset the offsets to zero and start again.
See also#
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