Incremental move distance changing with zoom level?

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2021-08-13 21:12:50

When I use Shift+arrows to move a Pixelmator Pro layer in what should be 10px increments, according to the documentation and the usual behavior of other apps, it instead varies this increment according to zoom level. (E.g. 10px at 100%, 20px at 50% zoom, and so on.)

Maybe this is intentional behavior, and I can see what might be the reasoning behind it, but the increment change is frustrating when you're trying to do precise positioning at varying zoom levels. Is there any way to disable this?
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2021-08-19 13:34:28

Hi Brooke. That’s, indeed, expected behavior in Pixelmator Pro at the moment. 100% zoom is the tipping point at which the values start to change to accommodate for a smaller canvas. The way it works is this: at 100% and above, layers move 10px at a time. Below 100%, we calculate the 10px in screen pixels. The exact formula is 10 px divided by the current zoom percentage in decimal form. For example 10px / 0.8 zoom (0.8 is 80% zoom) equals around 12px, which is still 10px when rounded. Hope that makes sense. Good point regarding documentation — we’ll sort it out. As for disabling this behavior itself, we could probably create a Terminal flag to do that. We’ll see what we can do!
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2021-08-20 14:06:32

Thanks, Aurelija!

I do understand that reasoning, and I can see how this would feel more intuitive when you aren't counting pixels. I'd definitely make use of a Terminal flag, though, if you do make one!