I subscribe to this UK mag, Web Designer which is a great magazine, but their latest photoshop tutorial has got me stumped.

it asks me to create a flower, starting with one petal shape. Easy enough...

the it asks me to transform it 20 degrees a number of times to create a flower. But this doesn't make a flower... it just makes my petal dance around in a circle! I'm missing a step in order to make this flower. The transformation needs to copy the petal and add it to the current shape.

How do I do this??

You have to move the center point to the bottom of the petal shape before you do the repeat transform step. When you do Ctrl-T into Transform mode, you'll see the little circle with the crosshairs in the center of the image. You can move that anywhere you want it. Moving it to the bottom will make it rotate from that lower point rather than rotating around the center.

Once you've rotated it the 20 degrees, you then duplicate AND transform it repeatedly using CTRL-ALT-SHFT-T. You should wind up with your flower

yes! thank you! one more thing... is there any way to make all these shapes that I now have become one shape?

Certainly....Inside your Layers palette, hold down the 'ctrl' key and select which layers you want to merge. When you've selected each layer, press 'ctrl + E' and it will merge them