Inspiring

Answered

Transform Selection - Aspect Ratio Lock/Unlock

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
November 23, 2018
9 replies
16132 views

Well, something's different now. I used to be able to apply an elliptical marquee selection, then right click, select "transform selection", and pull on the left/right/top/bottom center handles independently to move each of them. Now when I try that, it responds as if there's an "aspect ratio lock" applied. So, when I pull on the left handle outwards, the top and bottom sides move out a proportional amount, unbidden. If I pull the top up, the left and right sides move out as well. I want each to happen independent of the others. Worked fine last time I used it (weeks ago), now it has the wonderful new unwanted behavior. Anyone know what the fix is?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Gregory Burns

Interesting. This occurred with 20.0.1. I thereupon downgraded to 20.0.0. Same problem. Went backwards further to 19.1.7 (you can do this by using the CC app, selecting the app you're interested in, in this case PS, then next to the open/upgrade button click the little down arrow at the right of it and select "manage", and you can then get older versions installed). The 19.1.17 works properly. Well, at least it works the way it used to. It doesn't irrevocably lock the aspect-ratio control regardless of the checkbox settings (apparently indicated by the blue outline of the selection box). But, while in 19.1.7 I thought it might be interesting to see if the aspect-ratio lock checkbox worked properly. No. It doesn't. But it "doesn't" in a different way. If you check the box and grab a side handle (versus a corner handle) it auto-magically unchecks itself and doesn't enforce a lock on the aspect ratio. Eh, broken in both versions, but in different ways. I love doing Adobe's bug-checking for them. Especially when I'm rushing a deadline and something suddenly doesn't work properly. Guess I'll use the downgraded 19.1.7 until they get the 20.0.X versions fixed (guess that'll be 20.0.2 if we're lucky).

gener7

Community Expert

As of CC2020 v21.0.2, and CC2019 v20.0.8, checking on "Use Legacy Free Transform" will bring back the old way ('Legacy' in computing terminology) of holding down the Shift key to proportally scale the Free Transform box.

K

katerila11

New Participant

Thanks for this!

I'm wondering why they keep changing small things like this with every update?! Whether the aspect ratio is locked by default or not doesn't have such a huge impact on the performance of Photoshop IMO, it just annoys all of us long-time users who now have to adapt to the new default or go look for legacy settings. Isn't there anything more important the Photoshop team needs to work on?!

davescm

Community Expert

Apparently some users disagree with you and were requesting this

Dave

davescm

Community Expert

I'm not sure why this thread has come to the top of the forum list again, but for completeness, in current versions you can use Preferences >General >Use legacy free transform if you prefer the older behaviour

Dave

Creative_Creecher

New Participant

Adding shift to make this work is fine. WHat is not is that I should still be able to uncheck the toggle button that has the lock chain icon on it. That should still work even if the shift key now makes this work also. Bad User Experience Adobe!

royston1

New Participant

I've been using Photoshop since 1997 and I make my living from coding up HTML/CSS which often comes in PSD. I was not able to find out myself that corner of selection has to be dragged with SHIFT. It's not intuitive. I was dragging sides, not corners of selection and nothing worked.

Feature suggestion #1 to Adobe - Please put a toggle on the toolbar to toggle the enforcing ratio on "Transform Selection".

Feature suggestion #2 to Adobe - Currently, when selection is transformed, CTRL does nothing. ALT scales from the centre and CMD skews. Let's map the CTRL to disable the ratio lock.

To give some context to people who wonder why does anybody need selection transformed at no particular ratios - it's needed when you want to slice the image into pieces like this:

gener7

Community Expert

I think your explanation would get better traction here: Photoshop Family Customer Community where the product managers are.

We're basically volunteer support and guidance for Photoshop troubleshooting and techniques for both new and old users.

Gene

G

Gregory BurnsAuthor

Inspiring

Genr7's solution works, though the check-box then is broken in a different way (aspect ratio lock creates the selection as X-Y axes both equal in size; apparently can't handle them being unequal). But I hate having to work to discover band-aid fixes that require specialized approaches. It's kinda like the preferences file you get set up just the way you like it, and then something changes and you have to delete it and start all over again. Would be nice if things simply worked the way they were supposed to...

Dr. Ayman Raafat Ph.D

Inspiring

to unlock the aspect ratio lock for the transform selection you can press shift key while moving the corners ,

good luck

Ayman

Unseen Perspective

New Participant

Adobe has updated how it works and not let us know... Hold shift and it releases the aspect ratio when moving an edge..

Dr. Ayman Raafat Ph.D

Inspiring

thats the confusing to press shift to release the aspect

MacAwesome88

Known Participant

THIS IS SO F***** ANNOYING THAT I NOW CANNOT TRANSFORM MY SELECTION OF A SIMPLE RECTANGULAR SELECTION NON-PROPORTIONALLY.!!!. I'M WORKING ON VERY IMPORTANT CUSTOM DESIGNED GREETING CARDS FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

I WANT TO THROW MY LAPTOP AT ADOBE! YOU BETTER GET THIS FIXED IN THE NEXT WEEK MORONS.. I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU PUT OUT CRAP LIKE THIS! I'M SHUTTING DOWN MY ADOBE WORK-FLOW RIGHT AFTER CHRISTMAS,, JAN 1ST MOVING TO AFFINITY. YOU GUYS SUCK!

THIS IS DISGUSTING! PHOTOSHOP 2019.0.1 - TRIED EVERYTHING POSSIBLE.

G

Gregory BurnsAuthor

Inspiring

Yeah, you and me are screaming the same thing. Roll it back to 19.1.7 and it should work properly (AKA PS CC 2018). I spent 4 hours today trying to figure this out before I tumbled to the "roll backwards to prior version" solution. Pity. You'd think a big company like this could have quality assurance policies that would minimize or eliminate this type of issue. I pay $600 a year (well, actually my company does) for the subscription service, every year, year after year, and this type of cluster-f**k pops up at least once a year. Go figure...

MacAwesome88

Known Participant

Amen Brother.. they can take their Adobe MAX show and shove it! They're getting as bad as Microsoft, (the rigmarole I went to With them about OneNote Not syncing properly for months.) Their support was Dreadful Telling me to create a guest account And deleting Extensions That were 10 folders deep which didn't work anyways. Whoops I digress But anywho, Yes You did the right thing Reverting to 19.1.7. ~ Robert

G

Gregory BurnsAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Interesting. This occurred with 20.0.1. I thereupon downgraded to 20.0.0. Same problem. Went backwards further to 19.1.7 (you can do this by using the CC app, selecting the app you're interested in, in this case PS, then next to the open/upgrade button click the little down arrow at the right of it and select "manage", and you can then get older versions installed). The 19.1.17 works properly. Well, at least it works the way it used to. It doesn't irrevocably lock the aspect-ratio control regardless of the checkbox settings (apparently indicated by the blue outline of the selection box). But, while in 19.1.7 I thought it might be interesting to see if the aspect-ratio lock checkbox worked properly. No. It doesn't. But it "doesn't" in a different way. If you check the box and grab a side handle (versus a corner handle) it auto-magically unchecks itself and doesn't enforce a lock on the aspect ratio. Eh, broken in both versions, but in different ways. I love doing Adobe's bug-checking for them. Especially when I'm rushing a deadline and something suddenly doesn't work properly. Guess I'll use the downgraded 19.1.7 until they get the 20.0.X versions fixed (guess that'll be 20.0.2 if we're lucky).

G

Gregory BurnsAuthor

Inspiring

I see that now by default the "lock aspect ratio" checkbox is checked when initiating a "transform selection". Doesn't matter if I uncheck it though, as even though the check disappears, the behavior remains. Any suggestions? Next step will be uninstall/reinstall PS I guess.

gener7

Community Expert

To revert to the legacy transform behavior, do the following:

Use Notepad (Windows) or a text editor on Mac OS to create a plain text file (.txt).
Type the text below in the text file:

TransformProportionalScale 0
Save the file as "PSUserConfig.txt" to your Photoshop settings folder:
- Windows: [Installation Drive]:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2019\Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 Settings\
- macOS: //Users/[User Name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 Settings/

kristinbitler

New Participant

Thanks for the info. I struggled with this for a couple of hours. Your solution was quicker than downgrading, which I will do if I run into more issues.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded