Center Cursor during Selection

[Dirk184]

I setup the Selection Tool to select a circle. How can I start my circle at the center of my picture. I can't figure out . Does exists a special keyboard shortcut?
Using 2021 Ultimate

[Kathy_9]

If I understand what you're asking, you should put your cursor in the center of your picture, left-click and drag to the size you want. Then if you are not happy with the position of the circle, right-click inside the circle and drag it to where you want it.

[Dirk184]

If I understand what you're asking, you should put your cursor in the center of your picture, ....

Thanks Kathy: But how can I put my cursor excactly in the center/middle of my picture?

[Kathy_9]

Go to the View menu and activate "Rulers" to use as a guide.

[Jean-Luc]

Use the Rulers and Guides to draw horizontal and vertical guides crossing on the center of the image.
Set the mode Snap to Guides

Select you Selection tool and move your cursor near the crossing center and drag your circle. It will snap to the exact center.

[hartpaul]

Or another way if you do this often
1. Say your image is A and about 2000 x 1333 pixels.
2. Make a new document B about 10% the size - I used 300 x 300 pixels.
3. Choose the selection tool and with B active draw a very small circle and fill it with a color not generally found in your image As.
3. Selections > Invert
4. Right click B layer and Promote Background Layer.
5. Hit the Delete key and you will have your small circle in B with a transparent background.
6. Objects > Align > Centre in canvas - you now have your small circle in the centre of that image B. Selections None.
7. Left click on Layer B and drag the thumb over onto A and release. It is copied and pasted as a new layer centred in A
8. Choose Selection tool. You can now use this tiny centered circle to place your cursor and draw your larger selection from that centre point.

You can save B as a png or pspsimage in a place easily accessed to copy and paste on future images A.
The following image shows my results.

Or another method
Starting with image A
1. Make a new transparent raster layer
2. Selection tool draw your circle approximately in the centre and fill it with black
3. Turn off the visibility of layer A. - Leaves you with a black circle of the size you want approximately in the centre.(really does not matter where it is so long as you have the full circle.
4. Selections none.
5. Objects > Align > Centre in canvas
6. Using the majic wand tool select the black circle and hit the delete key.
7. Turn on the visibility of layer A. You now have your selected circle exactly in the centre of the image.

[LeviFiction]

If you want to make centering the guides a little easier you can use this script -

CenterGuidestoLayer.zip

(648 Bytes) Downloaded 17 times

Just unzip the file into your Scripts-Restricted folder. Then in your script toolbar run the "CenterGuidesToLayer" script. This script does one thing, it finds the center of the currently selected layer, and adds two guides smackdab at the center. You can then use the snap to Guides option as Jean-Luc suggests.

Another option.
1) Grab Ellipse shape tool
2) Set it to circle mode so that it's a perfect circle
3) Drag out the circle
4) Objects -> Align -> Center in canvas
5) Go to edit mode and change the radius settings until you get the size you want
6) Selections -> From Vector Object
7) Delete or hide the vector layer that was created.

This lets you move, and resize the circle to meet your needs before turning it into a selection.

[migf1]

I was about to post what Levi suggested in his last post. Just make sure the circle has a fill color before doing step#7 (else you'll get a selection of the stroke only).

[Dirk184]

Many Thanks for your suggested solutions - very helpful.
@LeviFiction: Your Script works perfect for me