Photoshop: Select a layer and 'show this in viewport' or 'zoom to'

[andrewcrocker-yz4BaD]

I was working on a set of icons, and realized an area where the interface was getting in my way. I'd like to be able to select a layer in the layer palette, and then show it in the viewport.

So here's the specific use case: you're working on a big field of small icons. click on a layer in the palette for an icon that's currently not visible, and hit a shortcut to move the visible area to it.

If you keep clean layers, you could navigate your document really quickly! no more zooming out, looking around for your icon and then zooming back in.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I've got exactly the same problem Andrew.

I don't understand why there is no way to 'zoom to a layer' or 'zoom to a selection'.

No more zooming in-out, what a waste of time...

[honorm76400537]

I was just looking for this function because I'm working on a hundred fifty or so elements on a document.  I'm guessing it's still not a thing. 😞

[StefanKlein]

Very much needed feature, indeed!
There already is something like this for artboards: If you ALT-click on an arboard in the layers panel, Photoshop automatically zooms to it. This would be super useful for any kind of layer, not just artboards.

[Kukurykus]

That would be great addition for some of us, but I doubt number of people needed it is huge. From my experience there's small chance Adobe consider it as needed to implement. At least after 5 years of waiting that doesn't seem to happen.

Fortunatelly that's quite easy to solve programically, if you want to have it let me know 😉

[Kukurykus]

'zoom to a selection' isn't problem as well. If you are still interested to get this feature just say it...

[Kukurykus]

Well it is, the thing. it depends who you are targeting with this question, what is your nickname on regular Adobe Photoshop Forum?

https://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop

[Kukurykus]

Indeed it works on artbouard with alt so like on whole documents (but with no alt), too bad not on single layers. Artboards were implemented just few years ago, so engineers could make it perfect at the time of doing. Layers is old stuff, I'm not sure they will change their behaviour, but if you'd like a method that doing the same trick contact me. My regular Adobe Forum name is: Kukurykus

[Tex Jenkins]

It seems to be in most other applications, InDesign and Illustrator, don't see why they wouldn't add it to Photoshop. 

This would be very helpful for me right now.

Image is not available

[Earth Oliver]

I thought i maybe had a cool intuitive trick for making this work... hit cmd/ctrl-t to transform the offscreen element and the view would shift to it. Unfortunately, this did not go as expected and one still need to search the canvas to find it.

[J453]

I'm not seeing a zoom to layer in AI or ID. Can you show me where you're seeing these?

[J453]

This feature was added to Photoshop 2020. Option click layer thumbnail to zoom to layer content bounds.