This tutorial takes a row of player photos from "roughly placed" to a finished team layout using the alignment toolbar: line faces up, space the row evenly, arrange the classic pyramid, and fix any odd-sized photos — all in a few clicks.
Before you start
- Place your player photos on the canvas, one per layer. They don't need to be tidy — the toolbar does the tidying.
- Make sure each photo has a detected face (drop-in detection usually handles this; otherwise select a photo and click Detect Face). The face-based tools need detected faces to work.
Step 1 — Multi-select the row
Drag a selection box across the photos on the canvas, or Shift-click them one by one. As soon as multiple layers are selected, the alignment toolbar appears.
The toolbar includes basic alignment (align top, vertical center, bottom — within the selection or to the canvas), plus the team-photo tools covered below. Hover any button for its tooltip; tools that need more layers or detected faces show why they're disabled.
Step 2 — Face align: line up the faces
Click the Face align button (the face-scan icon — enabled with 2+ photos that have detected faces). It lines the row up by the faces themselves, not the photo frames, so subjects photographed at different distances still come out level.
A dropdown next to the button picks the mode:
- Align — shifts each photo up or down so every face center sits on the same line. Photo sizes are untouched.
- Align & Scale — also equalizes face size, resizing each photo so all faces render at a matching height, then lining them up. (Photos with face placement enabled keep the size their face-target box dictates — they're moved into line, not resized.)
Your mode choice is remembered for next time.
Step 3 — Team distribute: space the row
Click Team distribute (enabled with 3+ layers). It spaces the photos evenly across the row — using each photo's visible subject for the spacing when that information is available, so cut-out photos with transparent margins are spaced by what you actually see.
The % field next to the button controls the rake — the vertical step applied outward from the center of the row:
- A positive value steps each photo down as it moves out from the center, producing the classic arced team row.
- 0 gives a perfectly flat row.
- A negative value inverts the arc (outer photos step up).
The percentage you set is remembered between sessions.
Step 4 — Arrange by height (the pyramid)
Shot the row out of order? Click Arrange by height (next to Face align; needs 2+ photos with detected faces). It reorders the selected photos into the conventional team pyramid — the tallest subject takes the center and the others fan out left and right, alternating. Tallness is inferred from where each face sits in its photo, so no measuring required.
Step 5 — Normalize widths (fix odd-sized photos)
If one photo came in a different size — a late addition, or a legacy design — click Normalize widths (the reset icon at the far right; needs 2+ photos). Every selected photo is set to the selection's most common width, keeping each photo's center and vertical position. Photos with face placement enabled are skipped, since their size is governed by the face-target box.
Chain operations — your selection sticks around
After every toolbar operation the photos stay selected, so the whole flow is: select once, then Face align → Team distribute → Arrange by height → Normalize widths in any order you need, without re-selecting. Each operation is a single undo step, so Ctrl/Cmd+Z cleanly reverses the last one if you change your mind.
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