Today’s Question: In Photoshop I have my preferences set to use the scroll wheel on the mouse to enlarge or decrease the size. Enlarging isn’t an issue it is decreasing the size. The image slides off the screen or to somewhere other than the center. Is there a check box in preferences to set this so the image stays centered?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can avoid this behavior when zooming out in Photoshop by turning off the Overscroll checkbox on the Tools tab of the Preferences dialog.
More Detail: When you use the scroll wheel or gesture to zoom in on an image in Photoshop, the area of the image that the mouse pointer is over is the area that will be the center of the zoomed in view. However, when you zoom out the image doesn’t get repositioned within the image area, so you might not be able to see the entirety of the image, for example.
However, if you turn off the Overscroll checkbox on the Tools tab of the Preferences dialog, you won’t be able to scroll the image beyond the bounds of the viewing area. That helps keep more of the image in view, because the entirety of the image is then not allowed to be moved outside the viewing area.
If you prefer using the mouse scroll wheel or gesture to zoom in or out, I suggest turning off the Overscroll checkbox, which will probably provide a solution you’re happy with in this context. It is also worth keeping in mind that there are other ways to quickly zoom in or out to specific settings.
For example, you can double-click on the button for the Zoom tool on the toolbar to zoom to a 100% zoom setting, and you can double-click on the button for the Hand tool to zoom to the Fit Screen setting. You can also press Ctrl+0 (zero) on Windows or Command+0 (zero) on Macintosh to size the image to the Fit Screen setting after you’ve zoomed in on a portion of the image.
