Zooming In and Out of Image Windows in Photoshop

Photoshop offers several ways to zoom in or out of an image, but you’ll probably find yourself using one method, such as the keyboard shortcuts, almost instinctively.
Each method has advantages of its own. Here’s a quick discussion of each:

-->Keyboard shortcuts: While using any tool, hold down the Shift key. Then press the Alt key (or press spacebar+Option on the Mac) and click to zoom out from a point centered on where you click. Press the Ctrl key instead (or spacebar+Ô on the Mac) and click to zoom in to a point centered on where you click the mouse button. Photoshop zooms in or out by one of its preset increments (such as 100 percent, 200 percent, or 50 percent, 33 percent, 25 percent, and so forth). The maximum magnification Photoshop allows is 1,600 percent; the minimum magnification is 0.0533 percent.

Using keyboard shortcuts is the best way to change magnifications on the fly.

-->Zoom tool: Click the Zoom tool in the Tools palette or press Z to activate it. Click anywhere in the image to magnify it by one of the preset magnifications mentioned in the preceding bullet. Hold down the Alt key (or the Option key on the Mac) and click with the Zoom tool to zoom out. In either case, the zoom centers on the point you click. The Zoom tool’s big advantage is its zoom selection facility. With the Zoom tool, drag in your image to create a temporary selection. When you release the button, Photoshop zooms in to fill the image window at the highest magnification that includes the selected area.

-->Options bar zoom buttons: When the Zoom tool is active, plus (+) and minus (–) zoom buttons appear on the Options bar. You can click the buttons to enlarge or reduce the image to the next preset percentage, centering the zoom on the center of the image.

As you zoom in and out, Photoshop does not alter the size of the document window, so your image may become too large for its window (in which case scroll bars appear so you can view the rest of the image) or too small (in which case a gray border appears around the image).

Select the Resize Windows to Fit option on the Options bar, and Photoshop automatically changes the size of the document window to show the full document in view, up to the size of the Photoshop working area.

-->Menu zoom: Choose View➪Zoom In or View➪Zoom Out to enlarge or reduce the image from the menu bar. You can also choose from these options on the View menu:
_ Actual Pixels (which shows your image on the screen at 1:1 pixel ratio)
_ Fit on Screen (which enlarges the image to the maximum size that will fit on the screen)
_ Print Size (which shows the image at the size it will print)

-->Magnification box: The Magnification box in the status bar at the bottom of the Photoshop working area (in Windows) or the bottom of each document (in Mac OS) shows the current magnification ratio. Many Photoshop users don’t realize you can also type in an exact magnification ratio in this box to produce a custom zoom level. This is handy if you need a specific amount of enlargement or reduction.

-->Match Zoom: Photoshop CS offers a new command for zooming when you have more than one document open. Choose Match Zoom to have all your open documents match the magnification percentage of your active document.

-->Match Location: Another new command, Match Location, matches the locations of all your open documents with the location of your active document. For example, if you are viewing the center portion of an image, choosing this command then adjusts the views of all your open documents to the center as well.

-->Match Zoom and Location: And finally, Match Zoom and Location does both commands simultaneously.