Inspiring

Question

Adobe makes Photoshop worse: Drag n Drop of layers

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
August 31, 2026
6 replies
43 views

Photoshop. It used to work like this:
I’d type some text (copyright) in the bottom-left corner of the image. Using the cursor, I could then drag it into another open Photoshop project, and it would be placed in the exact same spot—without having to hold down Shift, Ctrl, etc.

Now it’s different: When I release the text in the other project, it gets dropped where the cursor is.

Why? Why has Adobe been continuously working for the past 4–6 years to make Photoshop WORSE?

EDIT: I tried figuring it out for 10mins now. it did not work!
Also when moving entire layers that fill the entire canvas - PS messes is up!
PS gets less and less reliable for professional jobs :(

Conrad_C

Community Expert

(I edited this post after remembering to try different scenarios)

I just tried it and what I get is:

Drop, or the command Edit > Paste, adds it to the destination document where the pointer is.

What Shift+Drop does depends on whether the destination document has the same width and height in pixels as the source document:

If the two documents are the same dimensions, Shift+Drop adds the layer to the same XY position in the destination document.
If the two documents have different dimensions, Shift+Drop adds the layer centered on the destination document canvas.

Edit > Paste in Place tries to add it to the destination document at the same position as the source document. But if the destination document has different dimensions/proportions, it might not be possible to add it in the exact same place.

So if you want Shift-Drag and Paste in Place to always add the layer exactly where it was in the source document, that only works right if the two documents have the same width and height in pixels. When the two documents have different dimensions, in some cases the XY position might not exist in the destination document, like if it’s smaller.

J

janh6203790Author

Inspiring

Indeed, different file sizes, even just by few pixels, is the culprit. It has always worked different to what it does now.

When you want to place a copyright in the corner of to slightly different sized projects it makes no sense that suddenly the text is dropped at the cursor, instead of close to the corner.

Its just like Adobe changed the Transform (Strg+T) Shortcuts. its VERY annoying to figure out and remember what ctrl, alt, shift does when you try to grab the corners and scale a layer.

Sometimes it feels Adobe wants us to move to Affinity and Canva. Honestly.

jane-e

Community Expert

@janh6203790

I’ve been using Photoshop since 3.0 in 1994 and have never seen it work like that.

Shift+Drag to a new document centers the selection in the document.
Try Copy, then Edit > Paste Special > Paste in Place or use the shortcut:
Cmd+Shift+V (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows)

Jane

Claire H.

Community Manager

Hi @janh6203790, ,Thanks for reaching out to the Photoshop Community Forums. Can you try manually resetting your Photoshop preferences: https://adobe.ly/4h3b2Ck. Remember to back up your settings before doing the preference reset: https://adobe.ly/4i5rMKi

If that doesn't help, we can use some more information. Can you send your system info, a screen recording of the issue, and a numbered list of the exact steps needed to reproduce it? You can find your system info by going to Help > System Info, copying and pasting it into a text file, then attaching the file here. Thanks! ^CH

J

janh6203790Author

Inspiring

like written under Conrads reply, different file sizes, even just by few pixels, is the culprit. It has always worked different to what it does now.

When you want to place a copyright in the corner of to slightly different sized projects it makes no sense that suddenly the text is dropped at the cursor, instead of close to the corner.

Its just like Adobe changed the Transform (Strg+T) Shortcuts. its VERY annoying to figure out and remember what ctrl, alt, shift does when you try to grab the corners and scale a layer.

Sometimes it feels Adobe wants us to move to Affinity and Canva. Honestly.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Its just like Adobe changed the Transform (Strg+T) Shortcuts. its VERY annoying to figure out and remember what ctrl, alt, shift does when you try to grab the corners and scale a layer.

What do you mean they changed them? I don’t think Ctrl and Alt functions have changed. The only thing I think they changed is that you no longer have to hold down Shift to scale proportionally. It defaults so you don’t have to. To understand which way it’s set at any time, look at the link icon in the options bar when Free Transform is active. If the link icon is selected, it scales proportionally without Shift. If it isn’t selected, it scales proportionally only if you hold down Shift. So you can refer to that, and also, you can switch it to work the way you want: At any time, click that link icon to toggle it.

Yes, that does reverse the traditional behavior of the Shift key that was established over 35 years ago. But there is a good reason for it, and it points to a massive irony…

Sometimes it feels Adobe wants us to move to Affinity and Canva. Honestly.

The interesting thing about that comment is that I think Adobe actually reversed the behavior to be consistent with other photo software. Many of the latest image editing apps do not require you to hold down Shift to scale proportionally. This is probably partly because proportional scaling is what is needed more often (so why make people hold down a modifier to scale proportionally), and also…it is what people are used to from mobile apps, where touchscreens don’t have a Shift key. There, proportional scaling without a Shift key makes sense.

Some of the most popular competitors to Photoshop scale proportionally by default already, doing it before Photoshop switched over to match.

And that’s where the irony is:

If someone switches to Affinity or Canva because they believe Photoshop has ruined how the Shift key works for scaling, what they will find that Affinity and Canva already work in the same “screwed up” way they are trying to get away from…because Affinity and Canva actually did it that way first! Both proportionally scale without Shift. And I don’t think they let you change it. So someone might not find any relief from this change by going to Affinity or Canva.

But Photoshop lets you toggle proportional scaling with one click on that link icon.

It is in Photoshop where you have a choice.

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