How do I get Photoshop to include empty transparent space in a selection?

Hello Adobe Community,

My general issue is that when you free transform a layer, Photoshop automatically selects down to the boundaries of the layer. It essentially crops out transparent space outside the boundaries of the image. I want it to include the transparent space, because I am compositing groups of images based their dimensions, including transparent space.

This previous forum is the same issue I have, wondering if there have been any updates in methods in the last 6 years How to select the whole *.png content?

The workaround I have used so far is the File -> Place function, which allows you to drop in an image as a layer within a .psd file. This appears to take into account the resolutions of the source and destination files, meaning I have to scale it if the file resolutions don't match. I would rather open the source, resize it, and duplicate it into my destination file.

Thanks for any insight,

Chris