Inspiring

Question

Transform - set reference point button

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
June 9, 2025
3 replies
371 views

I'm familiar with image > transform rotate, scale etc. So when setting a transform, I can change the reference point by Ctrt T and tehn dragging the centre to wherever I want it. So far so good.

If I want to set it numerically, I have to move the reference point and then type in centre X, centre Y and rotation angle. Up until that moment it assumes that those values are it's transform location. The only difference being is that the centre of the grid of 9 squares is left unfilled:

So without offsetting the reference point first (which seem counter-intuitive if you are putting in numeric values)

OR

toggling the reference point location every and then back on again (v annoying)

Is there a keyboard shortcut or button for this?

Windows

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

What I do is drag intersecting guides to the required location, which is usually the centre of the canvas.
Unfortunately, the FT Reference point will not Snap, so I drag the grid zero, zero to the guide intersection, which it will snap to.
I then start the FT and Alt place the Reference close to the guide intersection, and manually type 0.0 into the X: and Y: fields in the Options bar. BTW The nast UI colours are for the sake of the screen shot.

I mainly use this for FT Step & Repeat when a small offset will be multiplied with each new layer, but any time you need perfect locations it will work for you. It's just a pity that the Reference point will not Snap.

Semaphoric

Community Expert

Trevor, I use Step-and-Repeat a lot, and share your frustration with the lack of snap. I usually just get it close, zoom in to 1600% to fine tune. I'll give your method a try. Ideally, I'd like to set up and perform the transform without taking my hands off the keyboard. As it is, I press Ctrl+T, grab the mouse to get to the Option Bar, and back to the keyboard to tab through the fields. This is a gripe I have about using the Option Bar in general.

The icon for the Reference Point is not, as far as I can tell, able to be accessed from the keyboard, and requires a click on a tiny, six-pixel square from a tight grid of nine. Having to squint at the screen to set it sure slows things down.

Bojan Živković11378569

Community Expert

No, such a shortcut never existed. If you mean, for example, numbers 1 to 9 to set a reference point (presumably adding some modifier like Ctrl+Shift or similar), that would be convenient. Perhaps you could post it as an idea to improve and speed up the workflow?

G

Ghoul FoolAuthor

Inspiring

It's more an odd balance (and combination) of shortcut, click and move and then typing.

A, I just wanted to see if there was something I was missing in order to perform this task.

and

B) No one else has noticed this?

If you are doing a number of rotational transforms around a specific point you start to notice this pattern (well I do)

Call me cynical, but this isn't gonna make money so the parties in charge are not gonna be interested.

Plus, I don't want to go through the rigour of being told off by the Adobe UI police.

davescm

Community Expert

I don't know of an alternative shortcut. However, after pressing Ctrl+T, I just Alt+click anywhere on the canvas and then enter the numeric values that I want. It's marginally faster than having to click and drag in a specific place

Dave

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