Zooming In Photoshop CS4 and CS5


I’ll assume you’ve used a few versions of Photoshop and noticed the changes Adobe made in CS4, and now in CS5. To be clear, in CS4, Adobe added a “feature” that displays a pixel grid once you have zoomed to a certain level. In CS5, Adobe changed the default behavior of the zoom tool such that when you click and drag the zoom tool, the zooming happens as in an animation.

I hate both of these features. I don’t like the visual “noise” interjected by the pixel grid, so let’s first figure out how to get rid of that. Shopping through the preferences panel (Cmd+K on a Mac) reveals … um, nothing. So, a bit more Googling and messing around and presto! Go to View > Show > Pixel Grid and make sure it is unchecked. The first step in figuring this out was to identify the actual Adobe-approved name for the feature (Pixel Grid), then figure out how to turn it off.

Now, the second, and more frustrating, of these features is the zooming one. Figuring out what this feature is called took a bit more persistence. Pro-Tip: It’s called “Scrubby Zooming.” To turn it off and make it so you can again draw a marquee with the zoom tool to do your zooming, first select the zoom tool in the tool well. Then, with the zoom tool selected, look in the tool bar at the top, and uncheck “scrubby zooming.”

And now you’re back!

  1. #1 by Joshua on October 8, 2010 - 6:34 pm

    Thank you so much, it’s so dumb and obvious, I always look at the prefs for these things. It’s So So annoying the way Adobe like to push new features on professionals. Yes all it does is slow down productivity every time they release an update.

  2. #2 by Mel on June 22, 2011 - 4:22 am

    Thank you for saving me the frustration of finding a way to switch these “helpful” features off.

  3. #3 by Gjuro on August 26, 2011 - 3:12 am

    just saved my life (sanity).. thank you :)

  4. #4 by Eric on November 8, 2011 - 12:48 pm

    I have to turn View Pixel Grid off EVERY time I open a new document.

    Is there a way to turn it off permanently (or at least until I want to turn it back on)?

  5. #5 by photodiva on November 23, 2011 - 10:52 am

    Yes, you can turn it off. Go to View > Show and deselect Pixel Grid. This appears to be remembered even when you close one file and open another.

  6. #6 by tom on January 19, 2012 - 6:16 am

    Oh god, I was so angry with the new stupid zoom-thing in Photoshop 5.5! Already gave up… Glad I found this page here. Thank You!

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