Photoshop: Selection not visible outside canvas size

As far as I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong, it never showed selections outside of the canvas area. It does when you first select it. I noticed that the other day and I am under the impression this is change in newer versions of Photoshop.

But why don't you extend the canvas and use guidelines to crop it at the end? I do that all the time. And to see/evaluate the design I have a passport layer on top of everything that I switch on when I need to see the final design only. An advantage of this is that you can set this passport layer to the color which will surround your final design. Things look different on white, black, orange or any other color than the dark gray surrounding in Photoshop.

Photoshop has showed selections outside the canvas for as long as I can remember (past 16 years or so?) until recently.  I use it constantly as a quick reference to see if/how much imagery there is outside my canvas on a layer.  I really just wanted to send this to adobe as a bug fix, because it seems like something that was overlooked in a major update, but their bug fix request form sends me to this discussion forum.  I'm not seeking a workaround, because I'm already doing that.  Just asking adobe to fix this bug unless it was an intentional change that they made, because I can't see a functional reason for it.  If someone from Adobe can explain a valid reason why it was changed, or confirm that it was a bug and will be fixed, I would appreciate that very much.

i've never in my PS life (20+yrs) seen a selection extend outside the canvas in the way you're describing. Perhaps you're thinking of cmd-t? You can also activate the crop tool if you want to see all the image area around the canvas.

Perhaps what you are referring to is if you have "Show Transform Controls" checked on the Move tool's options bar. This will show the edges of the content off the canvas. Another way to show the edges off the canvas is to turn on View > Show > Layer Edges...

I can't find "Show Transform Controls" in the move tool, but that doesn't sound like what I'm looking for, because I'm not using the move tool or free-transform.  I'm just selecting to see how much excess imagery I have to work with on the fly using cmd-click(on a layer in my layers palette).  It's no big deal, there's other ways to tell the same thing that are less accurate, like free-transform on a layer, or selecting the layer and hitting c.  These workarounds just show a bounding box, so they are less accurate.  I looked at View>Show>Layer Edges, that shows me essentially the same thing as Free Transform and the Crop tool, the outer barrier of what is selected.  What isn't shown, and what I still suspect is a bug, is the outline of my selection that is outside my canvas.

I just tested it out on an older machine in the office that still has CS6 on it.  Eartho, you are now seeing a selection outside a canvas for the first time in your life.  Exciting times.  Selection view exists in photoshop CS6 when you cmd-click on a layer to select it.  I also turned on Layer Edges to test that (something I never use typically), it's the purple rectangle that shows the outer barrier of the imagery hidden outside the canvas size.  I also just had a co-worker test it on his machine that has CC 2015, and it was consistent with my CS6 test.  My current working machine has CC 2015.5, and I tested it with the same file, the selection edge disappears when it's outside my canvas.  I also noticed that the little animation that typically happens on a selected area was not happening as well, so it may be related.  So, I think it's a bug that has occurred in an update somewhere between CC 2015 and 2015.5.  

       

Since I was one of the guys saying it doesn't, I went ahead and tested it in Photoshop. I have 2017.0.1.

And indeed, you can see selection outside the canvas. At least the way I tested it.

I took a 100 hard brush and painted on a transparent layer. I then scaled that layer up and when I ctrl-click on that layer it displays the selection outside of the canvas. Even after saving and re-opening the image.

So yeah, I am sorry to have said what I said.



Nevertheless, when I painted with the brush beyond the canvas it didn't load the selection outside of the canvas. Meaning, when you initially paint outside the canvas, the content gets cropped to the canvas boundary.



So, it's probably either the technique that messes with you. Meaning that the image got cropped somehow, or it might be the 2015 version you are using.

It's probably the version...  I forgot that I'm on an older operating system and that even though CC auto updates for me, it might be an older version because of my OS.  Probably not on Adobe's radar to fix it for my particular software scenario.  I suppose if I can convince my IT dept to let me update my OS, it'll snowball into having a more current version of photoshop, and the problem with go away...  thanks for testing it Alex.

So, an update to this issue.  I've updated my operating system to the latest mac OS.  10.12.4, so CC has automatically updated my software to the latest versions as well.  I'm still having a similar issue.  This scribble goes outside the border in all directions, but when I cmd-click on the layer, it doesn't show any of it on two of the sides.  Still glitchy.  

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Where has my canvas gone?.

When I am trying to create and extra part of my photo canvas I can no longer see the area I have created with the crop tool. In the past it was black or white, now I don't see anything, but if I was to select it with a bounding box it is there. How can I make that area reappear?

Just updated my version to Photoshop CC 20.0.5 and it seems this problem persists. I'd juste like to know if this behaviour has been changed, or if some action can be taken to correct it.

I've asked the engineers to take a look.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Photoshop: When I "Select Pixels" on a layer with an image beyond the canvas, no ....

I have a layer with an image that extends beyond the canvas. When I "Select Pixels" for that layer, the marching ants do not appear. However, the info panel is showing that a selection has been made. On another layer, that is completely contained within the canvas, when I "Select Pixels," the marching ants do appear. 

I'm currently following a tutorial that shows the marching ants appearing in the first scenario, so why won't they appear for selections beyond the canvas?