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When I turn "maintain aspect ratio" on, snap-to-guide does not works when doing a free transform; when I turn "maintain aspect ratio" off, snap-to-guide works fine. I can do this mid-transform and see the difference immediately.
I've got all the "snap-to" options checked--obviously, otherwise it would not work with maintain aspect ratio off. I've tried various combinations of these, as suggested by other postings, and restarted PS between... no difference. I've tried this on multiple systems and am getting the same result.
I'm on the latest PS version, 22.5.1.
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Do you have the same problem in Photoshop 23.0 that was released this week?
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Yes. Just upgraded to 23.0 and tried it... same exact behavior: no snapping to guides unless I hold down the shift key or turn off maintain aspect ratio on the top. Thx.
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No problem with latest 23.0 version on Windows on my side. Have you tried preference reset what is general advice when Photoshop starts with strange behavior? Save any unsaved actions and presets before reset.
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They say in the doc's that the "most complete" way to reset preferences is to manually move the settings folder and let PS create a new one on launch... So, I renamed my C:\Users\markus\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2022 folder to something else, launched PS and saw a new folder created, including new default settings.
Unfortunately, this did not solve my snap-to issue... I tested guides before, but today I noticed that none of it works: guides, grid, document boundaries, etc. It's like you do shif-ctrl-; to turn off all snap-to functions. As long as maintain aspect ratio is on, none of my snap-to functions work. But as soon as I get out of maintain aspect ratio mode, snap-to works perfectly.
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Thx for the video--this really clears things up and confirms there is nothing wrong with my install or settings. I have the same behavior: transform by grabbing a corner, and no snapping; transform by grabbing the middle of a side, and snapping works (this all while maintain aspect ratio is on). Counter-intuitive, but at least a workaround. Thx for pointing this out!
I checked the Adobe docs... Their transform discussions talk about maintain aspect ratio, but do not mention anything about the difference in snap-to behavior beween nodes and when maintain aspect ratio is on vs off. Would be nice to have this "feature" documented.
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Just to confirm that problem exist. In my first attempt I didn't understand what is problem exactly. When moving object in free transform mode everything works fine. When scaling object in free transform mode things works as described, with maintain aspect ratio snapping does not work.
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Try using one of the handles in the middle of the side... snapping does actually work if you use the middle handle, but it does not work if you use a corner handle. The video posted by oskars784297 also illustrates this behavior.
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2025 update and this is still an issue, - can PS devs sort this as i wasted about an hour trying to find this thread? surely an easy fix?
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Hi @Neb5FEB,
Since this is an older thread, the original poster may not respond. Could you share a video demonstrating the issue you're experiencing? I attempted to reproduce the problem on my end but haven’t been able to. Thank you.
^CM
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🙂 "old"... sidebar... I first got into PS with 6.0 in 2000... snapping worked fine then. CS6 in 2013 was fine as well. It continued to be "just fine" until only a few years ago... forgive me for not having an exact record, but it seems to have changed sometime 3-4 years ago maybe. Around the same time, a refeign was building to make "maintain aspect ratio" a sticky option, and eventually Adobe aquiesced. Not sure if any of this is related, but the timing sort of feels like it.
Clearly, the current behavior re: snapping is a conscious design decision from Adobe. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, because the functionality is really still there, albeit you have to know how to access it by using a middle-handle for scaling instead of a corner-handle. There is a really good argument to be made on the grounds of UI intuitiveness, but the functionality is actually there.
That said, none of the Adobe docs talk about this nuance. Right now, these 2 pages talk about transforming:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/transforming-objects.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/free-transformations-images-shapes-paths.html
Both say the following: If the Maintain Aspect Ratio button (Link icon) is ON in the Options bar, drag a corner handle to scale the layer proportionally.
So, the basic instruction from Adobe is to use corner handles to scale, and they never talk about how this affects snap-to functionality and how to overcome this with using a middle-handle. A clear miss in the documentation.