Zoom in with touchpad gesture without pressing alt

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In Photoshop, I can only zoom in using the touchpad if I hold down the alt key. If I do the gesture without the alt key, the image only moves left or right. If I hold down the alt key, the "actual" gesture (swiping in one direction with two fingers) also zooms. Is there a way to set the touchpad gestures so that the image only moves when you swipe in one direction with two fingers and the image zooms in when you zoom in with your fingers on the touchpad without pressing the alt key for any gesture?
In the browser or other applications, zooming in works even without holding down the alt key.

Win 11
Ps-version: 25.12

Windows

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Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi all,

Apologies for the inconvenience. On Windows, Photoshop receives two-finger touchpad gestures through the operating system as scroll events. Because of the Windows input method Photoshop uses, it cannot reliably distinguish between a two-finger scroll/swipe and a pinch-to-zoom gesture.

As a result, Photoshop cannot independently assign one two-finger gesture to panning and another to zooming in the same way some web browsers can. This is why you may need to use the Alt key with the touchpad gesture to zoom in Photoshop.

This behavior differs on macOS, where pinch and scroll gestures are provided to applications as separate gesture events, allowing Photoshop to distinguish between them.

So, the difference you're seeing between Photoshop and browsers on Windows is related to how touchpad gestures are communicated to Photoshop by the operating system.

Hope this answers your question!

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Thanks, Srishti Bali | Community & Engagement Strategist, Digital Imaging | Adobe

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

You'll have to look at the touchpad settings, since Photoshop really just uses whatever those settings are.

Some gestures require three and four fingers.

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Jeff Arola

Community Expert

In Photoshop go to Edit>Preferences>Tools and check Zoom with Scroll Wheel.

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K

katja_2552Author

Participant

Thanks for the quick reply! If I activate the setting, I can now zoom in without holding down the alt key. Swiping with two fingers from left to right/up to down also zooms in now. Is there a way to assign different functions to these two gestures? I would like to be able to zoom in on the image using the zoom gesture and move the image in a certain direction through swiping with two fingers, and not have to press the alt key for either gesture. Is that possible?

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