With the Zoom Tool active, click on an area where you want to zoom in and keep your mouse button held down. Continuous ZoomĪnother way to use the Zoom Tool is with a feature known as Continuous Zoom. Release the Alt or Option key to switch back to zooming in, and release all the keys to switch back to the previous tool so you can keep on working. To zoom out, add the Alt key, or the Option key on a Mac. You’ll have access to the Zoom Tool for as long as the keys are held down so you can click on an area to zoom in. Mac users may need to hold the spacebar first, then the Command key, to avoid a conflict with the MacOS operating system. Just hold down the spacebar and the Ctrl key on a Windows PC, or the spacebar and the Command key on a Mac.

But rather than selecting it from the toolbar every time you need to zoom in or out, a better way is to access the Zoom Tool temporarily from your keyboard. So the Zoom Tool is great for zooming in on a specific area. How to temporarily switch to the Zoom Tool from your keyboard Go to View > Show > Pixel Grid to turn the grid on and off. That’s because the 50% zoom level on the right is giving us a more accurate view. Notice how her eyelashes look softer on the left and sharper on the right. And on the right is the image zoomed in to 50% (one of the presets). So Photoshop needs to redraw the image with fewer pixels while still trying to make it look as accurate as possible.īut if you’re zoomed in at a value other than one of these presets, the image will look softer on your screen than it really is.įor example, on the left is the image zoomed in to an odd value, like 51.25%. Any time we’re viewing the image at a zoom level less than 100%, we’re not seeing all of the pixels. These are the zoom levels that give us the most accurate view of the image.

And if you press Ctrl+- (Win) / Command+- (Mac) repeatedly to zoom out, the zoom level jumps from 100% back to 66.7%, then 50%, 33.3%, and then back to 25%. Continue zooming in and the zoom level jumps to 50%, then 66.7%, and then 100%.

Current zoom version