P: Transform rotate handle click zone is too small (for auto-commit change)

[Beeglowbot]

The rotate handles' interaction radius seem so much smaller now since the patch. You used to be able to just drag pretty much anywhere and be able to start rotating, but now after the patch I have to be relatively close to the handles in order to start rotating. Quite inconvenient because there's no reason for my cursor to do anything else when in transform mode, why restrict it?

Is there any kind of setting (I couldn't find any) I can change to revert back to previous?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Having to click in a much smaller zone is intended to accommodate the auto-commit function. You can't fix it or revert to the way it used to be. You have to watch your cursor to see if you're in range. What you can do is click close to your object and then drag the cursor out further away, if you're used to controlling the "spin" by using a longer lever. 

They did that before with Type and I've never quite gotten used to it, but maybe if there's consistency with all auto-commit functions, we eventually will. We have to hope, anyway, since auto-commit by clicking away from the object appears here to stay. I personally thought we had plenty of ways to commit, but if they found that wasn't true for a large segment of their user base (they wouldn't change it for the sake of change), then we need to just think "click closer." '-}

[Beeglowbot]

but if they found that wasn't true for a large segment of their user base (they wouldn't change it for the sake of change)

I dunno about that. They still haven't given us the option to disable the "too large to export clipboard" warning, and I can't imagine anyone not wanting the option to disable that.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

> They still haven't given us the option to disable the "too large to export clipboard" warning,>

Doesn't that prove my point that they won't change for the sake of change? ROFL

Maybe they're waiting for their user base to volunteer to them how awful that one is. I do think it probably doesn't take much support to add a do not show again checkbox. This auto-commit thing definitely isn't a copy-paste code and forget about it JDI. They had to think about how much room to give us to click without auto-committing, while still making it possible for the rest who like it to figure out how far makes sense with  "click further away."   '-}

[Beeglowbot]

they have plenty of evidence. for example there was a live demo recently and the person kept having to click it away and said out right said how annoying it was. oh well.

this is definitely more complicated but I feel like they need to allow legacy options just like all the other ux changes they've made. especially for muscle memory tasks like this and proportional transform (on by default now).

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I know I'd like legacy options for something like proportional scale and even whether or not we auto-commit. A great use of the Properties panel, perhaps, to put all our legacy commands there.<G>

But I'll play devil's advocate here for a second. Despite that I don't like auto-commit for Text that's been around for awhile, and don't like using the Shift key to distort a transformation, it won't take very long for them to have to support two separate program within PS—one for all the "new" behaviors, and one for all the legacy behaviors. I don't know who uses the legacy Brightness/Contrast checkbox, but I'll bet if they eliminated it, and support for it, we'd find out soon enough whose workflows were just fatally disrupted.<G>

So while if they'd asked me, I'd have said "don't change it!," they asked others who said it made it nearly impossible for them to enjoy using PS—probably all of those who came over from other image editing apps quite recently, or who use PS only occasionally. . . but nevertheless, I do kind of get why they aren't building in legacy for every function. I've had to work at feeling this way about the changes to Transform (and Type earlier, as I keep saying and have NOT forgotten that I dislike it<G>) but I really doubt they're  simply messing with us because it's a fun thing to do. (Could be wrong—think of the power they hold! LOL) They are probably looking ahead and realizing just how many legacy features and behaviors we have after some 20 + years. (And I'd still cheer if they found a way to accommodate both groups for Transform on the Options bar.)

At least we still get a legacy setting for the old New Document dialog. . . avoiding that new New Document dialog is a big one!

[Kukurykus]

That what I thought up in other post. It would be best to have every 3 years additional Ps release where everything is fixed and no stuff implemented until next few years when we have enough many new features to create another such Photoshop. Then all who want to be uptodate and sad because something got changed or doesn't work would follow fresh releases while others wait everything is going to be sorted out that Ps is not so modern, but at least friendly.

I'm not saying to wait bugs get fixed for current release as CC 2018 was an example thatn even after 8 months that wasn't done, while something like Device Preview (that I never used) needed people to use CC 2017 for it only. Anyway it's marketing so they will care of income in first instance that we can't dream a day of distinct Ps versions will ever come...

[TSTLOFT]

I think I have noticed that I do have to be slightly closer to the transform box in order to rotate, but I did not find it to be a deal breaker. It's just being a bit more accurate, which depending on task may slow you down a fraction.

I do hope that we aren't breaking old school ways of working too much, as some of us started on the 1st photoshop and some of the more standard workhorse tools have workflow that we are extremely accustomed to and are a part of our efficiency at work. Like, this can be a slippery slope.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Of all the changes I find this one to be the most disruptive to my workflow. 90% of the time I try to rotate, I end up auto-committing. Super frustrating. Auto-commit is a fine idea, but please give us some ability to adjust the spacing or an on/off setting for those of us that actually used that space to rotate images, which I would imagine is a strong majority. Hitting the enter key was not that hard to commit.

[Kukurykus]

You have very good solution - ability to increase space a cursor is far from the beeing rotated layer to avoid 'auto-commit' mistekenly.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Ahhhh! Why do they change things that actualy made so much sense?! It's nothing better than the old system! I like the fact you can not accidentally commit your transform. Now it happens every time! How can it be that I, as an experienced user, have to learn the whole process of this stupid software again? What's wrong with this company?

[Kukurykus]

Nothing is wrong in their God's mind. What is wrong with us we dare to opt 😉

[Joel xo]

This is my biggest complaint with 2019. I'm learning the new (old, for everything else) undo; I gave the default proportional transform a try, but at least we have a way to turn it off; but this is such a headache, since to make precise adjustments sometimes you have to be far away from the anchor point.

They make it sound like it was such a burden on users to click the OK button or hit enter, but you've always been able to commit by double clicking; this helps literally nobody, it just lets them add to the  "new feature" count. No computer user in the world can't double click. 

[Earth Oliver]

It's total and complete madness. Rarely are my transforms a single move which can easily be reproduced if i accidentally commit. I'm often moving, transforming, distorting, warping, and then committing. If i accidentally click two pixels too far away, i've just lost everything and there's no way to recover. A bad joke, really.

[Earth Oliver]

It's total and complete madness. Rarely are my transforms a single move which can easily be reproduced if i accidentally commit. I'm often moving, transforming, distorting, warping, and then committing. If i accidentally click two pixels too far away, i've just lost everything and there's no way to recover. A bad joke, really.

[Lumigraphics]

Give us a way to turn off transform auto-commit!

[Kukurykus]

Click Me Too button if that is criteria they take into account...

[Mathias17]

Photoshop v20.0.1
Windows 10


Select a non-empty, unlocked layer, hit CTRL+T - you can scale and rotate. Scaling is fine (minus the new SHIFT debacle / NOT going there right now), but rotation has changed for the worse.

I can no longer perform the accurate rotation transforms as I've always been able to, because once I move my cursor more than 100px outside the transform box Photoshop no longer allows rotation by simply left-click dragging as I've always been able to.
Clicking, after moving 100px outside of the transform box just applies the transform, unless holding a modifier key. This behavior is new. Apparently changed at the same time proportional scaling was changed.


For a real world example, here's a common use case affected:


This ink drawing was larger than my scanner. As I often do, I had to scan it multiple times and composite in Photoshop.
When Edit > Auto-Align Layers doesn't work I do it manually:



Above you see I've lowered opacity and moved the layer on the right so the top of middle dude's head overlaps the other one correctly in one spot, and put the pivot point on the top of the middle dude's head and now I want to carefully rotate it by hand until the two layers overlap correctly.
But as you can see, my cursor is too far away from the transform box to register as me wanting to rotate, yet I NEED to be this far away so I can manually rotate the layer very slowly and carefully - the closer my cursor is to the pivot point the more rotation happens when I move a single screen pixel.
Alt dragging the rotation scrubby bar in the top toolbar allows for very fine rotation but manually rotating IN the canvas area is far more responsive, updating in real-time.

For me, this is an annoying decrease in usability.
It's not uncommon for a graphics program to require you to have your cursor close to a transform box control point in order to do a manual rotation, but Photoshop always employed the better behavior in my opinion. It allowed for much more control and was easier.


Manual rotation is only possible (without modifier keys) if your cursor is inside the red region, pictured above.
Clicking in the grey hatched area will apply the transform.
(if the pivot point is moved outside the transform box, the red region expands to include it, as seen here - https://i.imgur.com/LhOSEUG.png)


Wonky Workaround #1
One can click inside of the new sacred 100px region bordering the transform box and then drag outward while holding left-click, and do very careful accurate manual rotating but it's awkward and causes the layer to have already rotated a little bit by the time you've moved your cursor to the desired spot.

  Fun Facts!
. . . as of v20.0.1:
Right-clicking inside the transform box: pops a context menu.
Right-clicking inside the 100px region: pops a context menu.
Right-clicking outside the transform box and 100px region: applies the transform.

Single left-clicking inside the transform box: does nothing.
Single left-clicking inside the 100px region: does nothing.
Single left-clicking outside the transform box and 100px region: applies the transform.

Double left-clicking inside the transform box: applies the transform.
Double left-clicking inside the 100px region pops a context menu: does nothing.
Double left-clicking outside the transform box and 100px region: invalid (first click applies the transform)

Wonky Workaround #2
Get back the old behavior by holding SHIFT and click dragging but rotation is constrained by 15° increments. 
You can also get back the old behavior by holding CONTROL and click dragging.
Once you've pressed SHIFT or CONTROL, and are holding left-click, you can release CONTROL and stay in rotation mode.
So . . . similar to now having to press SHIFT in order to do a non-proportional scale transform, one must also temporarily press CONTROL in order to do manual rotation if cursor is 


---


Today's Conclusion: Remember to press an additional key to do what you did before without that additional key. Cuz Photoshop.

At the end here is where I usually make a recommendation, but why bother right?
Just wanted to get this out, so I can go about my business.


Fortunately the new features and positive improvements to PS over the years do outweigh these occasional strange ui changes, but they're still quite annoying.

[J453]

Thanks. Engineering is working on ways to improve the current experience.

To disable Click to Commit, 

Add

OnCanvasClickToCommit 0

to the PSUserConfig.txt. 

See this document for more detailed instructions: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/enable-optional-extensions-photoshop-cc.html 

[TangCanada]

I would just prefer auto commit to go away... Whats wrong with pressing enter when usually one hand is on the keyboard anyway ?
I am so accustomed to hitting Ctrl+enter for text that I just do it all the time for transform too.

[TangCanada]

The only way to improve the current experience is to make auto-commit go away permanently either by option or removing it completly.... and pls bring back the old transform routine - these two would be the biggest improvement.

[Joel xo]

I usually, but don't always, have a hand on the keyboard (like when I'm working through lunch and I have to hold a sandwich) but double-clicking was just as easy... 

[TangCanada]

To be honest I never knew about the double click... just checked and it worked, but must hit within the bounding box, sweet...!
And they changed that?
I always knew Adobe had great mathematicians but seems their common sense elevator do not go all the way to the top floor.
When I have to hold a sandwich and work I always have to hunt down the check mark to commit... and its about two miles away on default screen with tools while I edit on secondary screen.... tnx.

[Mathias17]

Thank you for responding, Jeff!

[RosaPerry]

Jeffrey I think the best solution is to go back to cc v19 with Shift and no auto commit.

I think it's fair to say by the many comments in this particular section and other complaint sections that we don't want that change.

We, the original artists and designers on desktop PCs/laptops were her long before iPads and other tablets.

We are Adobe's loyal customers and have stuck by Adobe for a very long time.

Our preferences should come before any 'tablet' preferences. The reason being is that we were trained by Adobe how to use Photoshop a very long time ago. 

Users to 'tablets' should learn how to use PS on tablets and Adobe shouldn't be making their long term customers who work on their desktop PCs/laptops learn new habits.

Adobe needs to create the changes for iPad and iPad only.

[RosaPerry]

I think the best solution is to go back to cc v19 with Shift and no auto commit.

I think it's fair to say by the many comments in this particular section and other complaint sections that we don't want that change.

We, the original artists and designers on desktop PCs/laptops were her long before iPads and other tablets.

We are Adobe's loyal customers and have stuck by Adobe for a very long time.

Our preferences should come before any 'tablet' preferences. The reason being is that we were trained by Adobe how to use Photoshop a very long time ago. 

Users to 'tablets' should learn how to use PS on tablets and Adobe shouldn't be making their long term customers who work on their desktop PCs/laptops learn new habits.

Adobe needs to create the changes for iPad and iPad only.