Today’s Question: In the Photoshop Quick Tips course, episode 4 “Panning by Sections” explains how to move segment by segment through an image by pressing CMD + Page Down on a Mac. But what if you have a MacBook? There is no Page Down key on the keyboard.
Tim’s Quick Answer: On Macintosh computers without a Page Up or Page Down key on the keyboard, you can use the “fn” key in conjunction with the up and down arrows to achieve the same effect. This will enable you to use the panning technique for navigating among an image in sections within Photoshop.
More Detail: As noted in Lesson 4 of my “Photoshop Quick Tips” course, you can pan around an image in Photoshop in sections when you are zoomed in, by using the Page Up and Page Down keys. If you add the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh, that panning in sections will move horizontally rather than vertically.
On MacBook computers (as well as some other laptop computers) there is no Page Up or Page Down key, due to the smaller keyboard. However, there will generally be some form of “function” key that can be used in conjunction with another key on the keyboard to achieve the effect of Page Up or Page Down. In the case of the MacBook the arrow keys provide this solution.
So, you can hold the “fn” key and press the up arrow key to move up one section, or the “fn” key with the down arrow key to move down one section. You can hold the “fn” key along with the Command key so that the up and down arrow keys will cause your view to move left and right, respectively.
This panning is helpful when you want to zoom in on an image to evaluate for blemishes or other issues, and you want to be sure to pan through every section (and thus every pixel) in the image.
Note that my “Photoshop Quick Tips” course is included in the “Quick Tips Bundle”, which also includes “Photo Gear Quick Tips” and “Lightroom Quick Tips” (and more courses soon). You can find the bundle here: