P: Photoshop 2019: "Anchor Point Reference" is hidden by default when transforming an object

My guess is demographics—they conduct surveys and find out there's a problem with enough of their customers they decide to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it often creates another problem. The large anchor point I believe is in response to lots of people complaining they couldn't see the tiny UI elements, such as those anchors or color samplers.  Rather than let us assign colors, which admittedly still get lost against some backgrounds, they upscaled the UI. And then they hid they because it confused some, got in the face of others. Surveys are only as good as the samples returned. I'm guessing, but it seems a reasonable guess as to why they are changing things up—I can't really guess as to how they arrived at their solution.

My current conspiracy theory about going to huge elements like that (seems like an overreaction) is they're future-proofing against the day of 10K monitors. <BG>

We have been using Photoshop for years and then all of a sudden everything has changed. Aspect ratio, anchors, text i just don't understand the rationale behind these extreme changes. And the anchor point is HUGE it used to be 1 pixel and i would use it for precision when centering objects.

Thanks. It's been too long since I used Windows to comment on it. Adobe does try to be platform-agnostic, but then we still get different shortcuts and different bugs, along with some different platform advantages.

No it's not different for Windows. Well not for me anyway 🙂

When Transform is invoked, the anchor point reference can be moved to any spot on the square with your cursor, either in the proxy on the Options bar, or by dragging the center anchor point to any point on the Transform box. You don't need any modifier that I'm aware of. Are you saying that's different on Windows?

It's there as long as you're actively transforming. But then it returns to the center the next time you invoke Transform.

Maybe I'm not quite understanding what you're doing that you need to use the modifier?

After ticking in this box indicated by Sam Houchins II I find it not possible to fix the position of the anchor point to where I want to put, with it adjusted to the 9 points of the square by its right. I am still looking for a way to place the anchor at anywhere I want to put.

Edit: I found it possible by holding Alt (not sure of the key on Mac) and drag and drop the bounding box. Hope anyone finds it helpful (Version: 21.0.3 20200115)