Does anybody else find it crazy that width is measured in percentages? Any way to change it?

The Question:

Is there any way to get Photoshop to display the width and height in the default selected units when pasting an element selecting an element or transforming an element without using the Tape Measure tool? Is there any way to modify the behavior permanently so that Transform, for example, expects a pixel value rather than a percentage by default when transforming height and width?

If you are helping on the forum for points, you can ignore the rest of the post as it is commentary for discussion only. You probably won't get any points for participating, though your input would be welcome.

The Discussion

In Photoshop, if I select an area that I want to transform to be a specific width, I can use command-t to transform the selection. Even after using the app for 20 years, I still type in the dimensions that I want to transform the image to as pixels. I didn't say that I wanted to scale the image (which makes sense to use percentages) but rather I wanted to transform the image.

It is a gestalt violation to expect and display percentages for just the width and height. Why not the x and y values or the rotation angle or skew angle? Because transform is different than scale.

Scale, in English, implies a relationship that is relative to the original selection and always implies the limitation of height and width. That makes sense.

note: In abstract terms, you can scale all of the attributes like x, y, rotation, and skew-- though we seldom have the need to do that so it's not available in the scale tool. If we did have the ability to scale all of the attributes, you would expect the default values to be in percentages because that is the nature of "scale".

Transform, in English, implies to change the value and should include all of the standard parameters that can be transformed: position, size, rotation, and skew. But all of these values should be in the default measurement units. It is arbitrary and contrary to pick just the height and width to use percentages (which is redundant to scale) when you don't transform percentages of the other attributes by default.

I am grateful that we can at least modify the units by typing them in manually, but that only works if you know the exact value you want to place. Often I will size an element visually and then want to adjust the pixels to be the nearest whole number multiple or the closest value ending in 0. This is what the transform tool should do by default. But that's not very easy. 

Since the width and height ONLY display percentages (again, not Transformed values, but Scaled values), it is impossible to figure out the nearest whole number multiple or explicit quantified measurement. If I am using 100px per inch for an image of a kitchen when I paste a coffee cup into the picture, it would be nice to know it's pixel dimensions so I can transform it relative to my background. Knowing the image is SCALED to 100% when pasted doesn't help at all. This is especially true when inserting a vector image--the size in Illustrator has little to do with the size in Photoshop--but that's another thread. The same is true when I select something and Transform it, suddenly my width and height are useless.

Unlike the Photoshop Developers who have no problem changing context and throwing your workflow into disarray without notice, I have asked since before PS5 for a simple way to change the units in every field regardless of what the field expected by default. Being able to explicitly declare units when entering a value is a step in the right direction, but being able to see the parameters in different units easily makes more sense. This would allow you to click on the percentage unit and change it to px at any time and would make Transform a transform tool rather than a bastardized scale tool with extra transform features.

I have repeatedly asked for this kind of feature in all of Adobe products. I have submitted feature requestafter feature request and I have come to the conclusion that, like Adobe Customer Surveys, they are completely disregarded.  Here is a simple mockup that would solve the problem:

Notice the units for each field have the three dots under them? Clicking on the units could change the units from px to % to inches to picas, etc. Clicking and holding would simply display a pulldown menu selection allowing you to see the units the way that most benefits you. 

I would love to hear of any workarounds or new features that I have yet to discover. If anyone has any input, please feel free to respond. I am hoping this leads to a discussion where we can hear a variety of valuable perspectives.