How To Perfectly Center A Layer In Photoshop

(THE EASY WAY)

If you’re stuck with photoshop trying to perfectly center your layer, but just can’t figure out how to do it – This tutorial will change your life.

Today’s quick tip is inspired by my sincere dislike of photoshop.

Now don’t get me wrong – Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool and for the people who have mastered it, a capable and intuitive tool.

But If You’re A Photoshop Newbie… Its not pretty.

For dummies like me, who have spent frustrating hours trying to do the most basic of tasks to no avail and then swearing to never use photoshop ever again…. You know where I’m coming from.

Today’s tip was a big one for me, because it solved one of my long time photoshop frustrations:

How To Perfectly + Automatically Align Layers In Photoshop.

This also applies to centering objects in photoshop too… as well as centering images, text or groups. Basically centering anything in Photoshop – Without needing to do complicated math or count the tiny dots on a grid. And once you know how to do it, you’ll wonder how you ever used photoshop WITHOUT knowing about this tool.

Its called the move tool. And its meant for more than just dragging your text or object around with the mouse.

This tip is best shown rather than told, so make sure to watch our video for a quick example. If you prefer a written explanation – Here it is!

1. Select the Marquee Tool, and make a selection for where you want to center your object / text. In this case, I’m selecting the white space on the right of the image.

2. Select the layer which you’re going to be centering. If you want to center layers together, put them into a folder and select that folder. In this case, I’m just centering my text layer within my selection!

3. Now click the move tool, or select it using the keyboard shortcut V.

4. Using those silly icons for reference, select how you want your layer to be arranged inside your selection. Think of this like using Microsoft Word. Align right, left, center and so on. Its actually pretty easy once you know which is which! Here I’ve aligned the text on the right

Now I’ve aligned the text on the left.

And finally, I’ve aligned the text in the center. Bravo photoshop – Its actually easier than it looks! Although I’m still not impressed at the fact that in 3 years of using and searching in photoshop, I had to LOOK IT UP or I never would have found it!

So thats the basics of using the align tools inside photoshop to perfectly center your text, image, object, yadayada. Lets take it one step further for practice, and center our text in photoshop inside a smaller window.

1. Repeating our earlier steps, select the area with your marquee tool.

2) Once selected, switch to the move tool.

3) After selecting the layer you want to center, select from the toolbar how you want it aligned within your selection. Bam – You now know how to perfectly center a layer in photoshop!

Pat yourself on the back for your photoshop genius. And shake your head at a program that makes something so seemingly simple, so hard to figure out!

And thats how to align pretty much anything in photoshop automatically. No grids, no markers, no guestimating. Just select the area you want it aligned within, select the move tool, and align away! You’ve just perfectly centered your layer exactly the way you always wanted to. Photoshop 101 for dummies (Like me!)