A convenient and powerful method is proposed and presented to find the unknown phase shifts in three-step generalized phase-shifting interferometry. A slight-tilt reference of 0.1 degrees is employed. As a result, the developed theory shows that the unknown phase shifts can be simply extracted by subtraction operations. Also, from the theory developed, the tilt angle of the tilt reference can also be calculated, which is important as it allows us to extract the object wave precisely. Numerical simulations and optical experiments were performed to demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed method. The proposed slight-tilt reference allows the full and efficient use of the space-bandwidth product of the limited resolution of digital recording devices as compared to the situation in standard off-axis holography where typically several degrees for off-axis angle is employed.