Useful Tips for Navigating Your Documents

Useful Tips for Navigating Your Documents

Some useful tips and shortcuts for navigating around your documents inside of Photoshop. 

When to use

These tips can be useful for any project because they allow you greater ease of use and flexibility.

Instructions

• Begin by changing your Screen Mode until you have the Full Screen Mode with solid black around the sides of your document.
• You can do this by either choosing 'Full Screen Mode' from the bottom of the toolbar, or by using the keyboard shortcut 'F' on the keyboard to toggle through the three different modes that are available. 
• You'll notice that nothing else is appearing on the screen, but if you press the 'Tab' key your panels and toolbar will become visible. 
• This works for any of the Screen Modes.
• In the lower left-hand corner of your document window, you will see a percentage, and this shows us the percentage that we are viewing our document.
• We can Zoom In by pressing Command/Ctrl and the '+' key on the keyboard, or we can Zoom Out by pressing Command/Ctrl and the '-' key.
• Zooming in and out will change that percentage in the lower left depending on how zoomed in or out you are.
• If you are zoomed in and lose sight of the bottom of your document window, you can press Command/Ctrl + 0 on the keyboard to Fit To Screen.
• You can also resize your document window by moving your cursor over any of the four edges or corners of the window and dragging inwards.
• Let's zoom in so we are viewing our document at 100%.
• Decrease the size of the document window so that the view percentage is visible on screen.
• Switch to the Hand Tool by pressing the Spacebar and now you can click and drag to move around freely inside of the zoomed in document window. 
• Another way you can customize your workspace is by docking or undocking the document. You can do this by clicking and dragging the top gray bar of your window over to the top or the side of the window until you see the blue highlight appear. This can be a great way to organize your files if you have multiple windows open.

Hints & tips

• Navigating around your document using the Zoom In, Zoom Out, Fit To Screen, and Hand Tools can be ways to quickly speed up your workflow while making it easier for you to move around inside Photoshop.
• You can choose whether you want to hide or show your toolbar and panels regardless of which Screen Mode you're in by using the 'Tab' key.