Moving and panning the canvas (photoshop CS5)

[Belleville]

Hi,
Why is it that with some project files I can move and pan the canvas around, particularly over to the left as I prefer to work that way. And other files won't pan. I can zoom and move the image but not pan from left to right. Does anyone know the secret please?

[eddie]

Hi Belleville,

That sounds really strange, are you trying to pan using the hand tool? Would you mind posting some screen shots of the problem so I can get a better idea what we are looking at?

Thanks!

[Belleville]

Hi Eddie,
Yes, I am just using the hand tool - Spacebar + LMB. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't - bit infuriating though. I don't think screenshots would give any info though. I'm working through the Digital Painting (Creature) project at present.

[eddie]

I think I may know what you are encountering and it indeed is frustrating with CS5. I remember some times, when zoomed in, I wasn't able to pan beyond where the right or left border of the canvas wasn't touching the Photoshop interface. This happened more when I was drawing or painting near the canvas border and wanted to move it to the center of my work area. This also seemed to happen quite a bit when working in the standard screen mode. I've found that sometimes when encountering this, hitting the tab key to hide the panels temporarily fixed the issue. If this didn't do it, then typically I would hit the F key to switch to a different screen mode.

Hope this helps!

[dillster]

That's often a problem cause by having Firefox open. If you have FF open and the problem happens again, close FF and see if the problem goes away.

[Teshia]

Sometimes depending on how you're viewing your file it will only let you move to the edge of the file. Try pulling your file out of the photoshop window. Click on the tab at the top and drag it out, then try using the hand tool and see if that helps.