Center and align one layer upon another

[djwolf07]

I have a texture image in .dds file format.  It needs to have a 1:2 aspect ratio but it's closer to 3:4 aspect ratio.  I could crop it but I don't want to.  The solution was to create a larger canvas and then place the texture layer upon it.  Simple, right.  So I installed an alignment plugin.  The smaller texture layer was selected, the image was selected and I went to "effects", chose "center horizontally", there appeared to be some activity but the image didn't move.  So I thought maybe it's an old plugin (it was made in 2007) so I installed another but it didn't move the image either.

 

It is a simple issue and it will apply to work I do with text and other images.  Is it the DDS file format?  Or is it how I am using the plugin?  I have tried several options - not selecting the image, selecting the blank background.  How do I make this work?

 

[MJW]

You don't tell us which alignment plugin, but if it's "Object Align" the image must consist of a nontransparent region (called an object) surrounded by transparency. No plugin will center a selection. That's impossible for a plugin to do, because plugins can't move the selection, or write outside the selection. I would guess that what the alignment plugin did when you ran it is to move the nontransparent region within the selection to the center of the selection. If, as is likely, the entire region inside the selection was nontransparent, that would do nothing.

 

Assuming the region you want to center isn't transparent, and that you expanded the canvas, which would make the added region transparent, all you should need to do is to run the Object Align without making a selection.