How does alignment work in Photoshop?

Question

Design

How to determine which object has priority in alignment? Those. when we select two objects, align them in the center - one is aligned with the second, and sometimes they are aligned (shifted) both relative to the common center. What does it depend on? For example, in Korel it was like this: which object was selected last, is aligned with that.

Answer 1

In Photoshop, this doesn't matter (unlike Illustrator, it doesn't have a choice of how to align: artboard, selection, or key object). In the official guide, everything is written about the principles of Align alignment (not to be confused with the distribution of Distribution layers, but you just confused it, as I understand it).
That is, the first function aligns objects on different layers along one of the edges (top, bottom, left-right) and positions them flush on the selected side. And the second one works differently and should not be confused: it places objects on layers with equal intervals, starting from the selected edge. For example, there are three objects and we distribute them along the left edge, then it will move the middle one so that there is an equal number of pixels between the left edges of each of the objects. The layers are counted not in order in the Layers panel, but according to how they are located on the layout (i.e. the middle one will shift no matter what it is in the layer panel).

Answer 2

For me, this has always been a mystery too, so I use the following method. First, you decide on the object that you will align the other object with respect to. Next, hold down Ctrl and left-click on the thumbnail of the layer with the first object. You will create a selection along the outline of the object. Next, make active the layer that you want to align, select the layer move tool (hotkey V) and select the alignment method in the panel above. This way you will align the layer relative to the selected area, and in this case only the active layer moves, the selected area always remains in place.