P: Snap does not work when resizing proportionally

Report · Jun 21, 2012

To resize proportionally, one has to hold down the Shift key while moving a corner handle.
Unfortunately, this disables the snapping to smart guides: when view>snap guides is active, resizing a layer is supposed to auto-align to the edges of other layers, but it is not the case when doing it from a corner handle while holding down shift, a common practice.

Shift-resizing a middle handle does respect the wanted snapping behavior.

CTRL is the shortcut supposed to disable snapping, not Shift.

Report · Feb 13, 2016

I cannot snap to a guide while proportionally resizing a smart object in Photoshop CC 2014.

To be clear, I have a guide and a smart object. Moving the object will snap to the guide (snapping is turned on). But when resize proportionally, I can't snap to the guide. Snapping works when I resize un-proportionally, but that's no good for photos/art.

I'm on Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite with Photoshop with Photoshop CC 2014.2.1.

Am I missing something, or is this a bug/feature not yet implemented?

— Adobe Certified Expert & Instructor at Noble Desktop | Web Developer, Designer, InDesign Scriptor

Report · Mar 09, 2016

It's astonishing this has been overlooked to be perfectly blunt. I don't think it is a bug rather the user is expected to somehow expected to use snap guides without Photoshop constraining the dimensions - this is a feature that should have been in Photoshop as soon as snapping was introduced.

Report · Feb 15, 2017

it was so frustrating to constantly find transparent edges (and significant loss of quality if you have proportionally scaled up/down and low resolution sources) when free transforming backgrounds that i spent some time before figuring it out. first remark: guides are irrelevant so no point in using them, they just don't snap when holding down shift key
the best solution i use now is here:
1) measure your canvas size and remember/copy it (actually you probably know it as this is relevant to you in the first place)
2) free transform
3) move and snap left top corner to the corner of your canvas
4) switch reference point location to upper left corner (the one that you snapped to 0:0)
5) lock the proportions by clicking on the link button between W and H figures (each at 100% for now)
6) switch the unit of height (if you are trying to compensate height difference) or width (if width is your desired constant) to mm/cm/inch/pixels/point/picas, whichever absolute unit you are using by right clicking on 100% and selecting it from the pop-up menu
7) enter/paste the number of absolute units of your canvas size measured in the first step as new height or width (and press enter)
8) if needed, move now proportionally resized object again
9) commit transform (press enter again)
10) voila!

P.S. i would definitely qualify this as a bug not a feature

Report · May 05, 2017

if fact, shift+transform disables all snapping altogether. I was intending to write a feature request to allow snapping to document bounds as you shift transform. this would help tremendously when wanting to place photos perfectly fit to document width or height as you scale them. seeing a similar feature request was submitted 5 years ago does not leave me optimistic... so not fit to canvas and no snapping. we're losing pixels here 😞

Report · May 05, 2017

This would seem fundamental to so many different types of workflow. It's really shocking that it's never been fixed.

Report · May 06, 2017

we do have the handy resize image during place but that's only if use "place" and does only fit to height. fit to width also would be welcome no matter the cropping, many users need full frame. the big change would be if the free transform was snapping at 4 corners and not just 2.

Report · Sep 12, 2017

Good catch for the edges snapping. And again, it works from the center handles.

Report · Sep 16, 2017

snapping to center handles works, but will scale your image width or height only, not together. causing it to distort if the image is not in the ratio of your canvas. I am looking for a way to proportionally scale my image to the edges, and make it snap. which ever I choose. or an option to fit to width or height as a menu item.

Report · May 02, 2018

Folks:

We do have a bug on this behavior and we're going to look into it. Thank you for your feedback!

Eric Floch
Photoshop Quality Engineer

Report · May 11, 2018

When you resize proportionally an object, you hold shift+transform. The shift key automatically disables all Snap features, and it's not usable and I cannot align my images correctly. This isn't a problem when the shift key isn't pressed.

Photoshop has gone into some serious bugs lately. From the bug that doesn't show live text preview when a font is being resized, to many more. Please, I am like begging for this to be fixed. I have even looked into other programs like Affinity Photo and Designer, and they do not have this stupid, ridiculous issue that should NOT be a thing in Photoshop. This probably sounds like a small deal, but it is a huge deal to many designers.

Report · Nov 14, 2019

This issue should be fixed in the current version, Photoshop 2020 v21.x or later. Let us know if you're still having trouble.

Report · Dec 21, 2019

Hi, on Photoshop v21 I'm still having this issue, snap to smart guides is only working when I'm NOT constrain transforming, whether I have Legacy Free Transform activated or not

Report · Jan 08, 2020

Still not running in v21!

Report · Jan 22, 2020

Indeed, it does not work in all cases: in constrained, smart guides work with shift, but not without, in unconstrained, it is the opposite, it only works without shift...

Report · Jan 23, 2020

Looks like something got messed up with other Transform changes. Engineering is looking into this newer breakage. Thanks.

Report · Sep 08, 2020

This issue should now be fixed in the Photoshop 21.2.3 update.

To update Photoshop to 21.2.3, click"Update" in the Creative Cloud desktop app next to Photoshop. More detailed instructions for updating

Update: As Eric Floch points out below, this was not part of the 21.2.3 update. Sorry for the false positive!

Report · Sep 09, 2020

Hi Pete, do you happen to know if the following bug has been fixed in the last update (it's written as "solved" but still exists actually) ? Thanks : https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/having-trouble-with-hand-tool-and-marquee-tool/m-p/11421212...

Report · Sep 09, 2020

Maybe it "should be fixed" but it's not. I updated to Photoshop 21.2.3 on macOS Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021) and still can't snap to guides when maintaining proportions. So this bug still exists. I trashed preferences and still no change, no snapping. ☹️

— Adobe Certified Expert & Instructor at Noble Desktop | Web Developer, Designer, InDesign Scriptor

Report · Sep 09, 2020

Dan & All:

So sorry for the confusion, but there was a misunderstanding regarding the fix... We've fixed a bug we had where the NON-proportional case -- i.e. Options bar Lock OFF, or Lock ON and holding Shift -- was not snapping properly to guides, grid, layers, etc. This was a regression from previous functionality, and should be fixed in the current release.

Unfortunately, the proportional case behavior -- i.e. Lock on, or Lock off and holding Shift -- is still the same. A note on this that you won't like... According to the code, this was actually the way Transform was originally designed, way back in the day. The proportional case NEVER snapped. So this is not technically a bug, but rather an old design choice

That being said, we know you all dislike the lack of snapping in the proportional transform case. We have a ticket on the books right now -- an enhancement request -- to get the proportional case snapping. I know no one out there particularly cares, but it's not as easy as it should be, and we have a ton of work on the pile right now. I can't guarantee when we'll get to it. But we absolutely hear you.

Huge apologies for the confusion here. Thanks (hopefully) for your understanding.

-Eric Floch
Photoshop Senior Quality Engineer

Report · Sep 17, 2020

@peter_green_4140434 It seems that the update only fixes the non-proportional snapping, I almost cried of joy before trying... Could you demote the answer?

Report · Feb 24, 2021

Finally grew so frustrated with this behavior that I went searching to see if it's by design. Saddened to find this thread, would love to see the behavior changed

Report · Feb 24, 2021

Adobe's getting lazy and software updates are more and more buggy and unusable. Working only with Version 2020 as 2021 has bad latency and drawing issues... Illustrator is similar... so bad...

Report · Jan 02, 2022

It's 2022. We're on version 23.1. And this bug still exists.

Going on FIVE YEARS since the beginning of this thread. Y'all, this can't be more than a few lines of code to make this work.

Report · Jan 02, 2022

Scratch that, I was looking at the wrong date. It's been a full DECADE.

Report · Mar 18, 2022

v23.2.1 Release

I've pasted an item into a new document. It's too big. I press Cmd+T to transform. I grab the bottom left corner and drag up and to the left until I get close to the document bounds. It does not snap. I expect it to snap given that all snapping options are turned on in View > Snap To.

Pressing shift brings the transform out of "maintain aspect ratio" and now it snaps to the document bounds (but it doesn't maintain aspect ratio anymore)…

What am I doing wrong?