MY CARTHow to Use the Hand Tool in Photoshop and the Navigator Panel: Video Lesson
This video lesson, titled “Learn How to Use the Hand Tool and Navigator Panel in Adobe Photoshop: A Training Tutorial,” shows you how to use the Hand tool in Photoshop and the Navigator panel. This video lesson is from our complete Photoshop tutorial, titled “Mastering Photoshop Made Easy.”
The Hand Tool:
To pan and scroll a Photoshop document within its document window if you can’t see the content you want to edit at its current magnification level, click the Hand tool in the Tools panel. Note that this button shares its location in the Tools panel with the Rotate View tool.
After selecting the Hand tool in Photoshop, your mouse pointer will appear as a hand icon when you place it over the Photoshop document. At that point, click and drag to pan the content of the Photoshop document within the document window frame. This is a very “handy” tool to use when you must select something off to the side of the document window frame when you are zoomed in closely.
Because you often need to pan the Photoshop document when making edits, you can also quickly enable the Hand tool if you selected another tool by default. To quickly activate the Hand tool when another tool is selected, hold down the “Spacebar” key on your keyboard and then click and drag to use the Hand tool. To revert to using your previous tool, then release the “Spacebar” key.
The Navigator Panel in Photoshop:
Alternatively, you can also use the Navigator panel in Photoshop to move around within a Photoshop document, select different parts of it to view, and change its magnification. To show or hide the Navigator panel in Photoshop, select “Window| Navigator” from the Menu Bar. The content shown in the Photoshop document window corresponds to the area enclosed within the red box in the Navigator panel.
To change the magnification of the Photoshop document by using the Navigator panel, click and drag the slider at the bottom of the Navigator panel right or left to increase or decrease its magnification level, respectively. Doing this also changes the area enclosed within the red box in the Navigator panel in addition to changing the document area shown onscreen in Photoshop.
To pan around in the Photoshop document by using the Navigator panel, click and drag the red box in the Navigator panel to pan. Then release it when it shows the desired document content.
