How to find the center of anything in Photoshop
June 20th, 2009
You can quickly locate the center of a document, layer, or group of layers in Adobe Photoshop with one technique.
First, create a selection of whatever you’d like to find the center of. To select a document, press Ctrl+A (Select > All.) To select a layer, Ctrl+click on its thumbnail in the Layers palette (you can also Ctrl+click on its layer mask or path mask thumbnails for mask-specific selections.) To select a group of layers, Ctrl+click on one layer’s thumbnail in the Layers palette, then Shift+Ctrl+click on additional layer thumbnails (or masks) to add them to the selection.
Once your selection is set, choose Select > Transform Selection, or (with a selection tool active) right-click in the document window and choose Transform Selection from the context menu. The bounding box crosshairs mark the center of the selection, whether it’s a document, layer, or group of layers.
Turn on Snap (View > Snap or Shift+Ctrl+;) and drag vertical and horizontal guides from the rulers (View > Rulers or Ctrl+R) to the crosshairs to mark the center. Press Esc to cancel the selection transformation, then Crtl+D (Select > Deselect,) and you’re done.
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