Using Ruler Guides and Grids | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

If you've every seen a carpenter use a chalked string to "snap" a temporary line to use as an aid for aligning objects, you understand the concept behind guidelines. They're not structurally necessary and they don't show in the final product, yet they can still make your work easier. InDesign lets you create and display three types of nonprinting guidelines:

Ruler guides are moveable guidelines that you can create by hand or automatically. They're helpful for placing items precisely and aligning multiple items.
A baseline grid is a series of horizontal lines that help in aligning lines of text and objects across a multicolumn page. When displayed, a baseline grid makes a page look like a sheet of lined paper.
A document grid is a crisscross of horizontal and vertical lines that aid in object alignment and placement.

InDesign's grids and guides capabilities verge on overkill. Chances are you'll end up using a combination of ruler guides and the baseline or ruler guides and the document grid, but using all three is more complicated than necessary.

Ruler guides

InDesign lets you create individual ruler guides manually or a set of ruler guides automatically with the Create Guides command (Layout ‚ Create Guides).

Creating ruler guides manually

To create manual ruler guides, go to the page or spread onto which you want to place ruler guides. (If the rulers are not displayed at the top and left of the document window, choose View ‚ Show Rulers or press z +R or Ctrl+R.) Now click on the horizontal ruler or vertical ruler, and drag the pointer onto a page or the pasteboard. Release the mouse button when the guideline is positioned where you want it. If you release the mouse when the pointer is over a page, the ruler guide extends from one edge of the page to the other (but not across a spread). If you release the mouse button when the pointer is over the pasteboard, the ruler guide extends across both pages of a spread and the pasteboard. If you want a guide to extend across a spread and the pasteboard , you can also hold down the z or Ctrl key as you drag and release the mouse when the pointer is over a page.

Tip ‚

You can place both a horizontal and vertical guide at the same time by pressing z or Ctrl and dragging the ruler intersection point onto a page.

Ruler guides are cyan in color (unless you change the color using Layout ‚ Ruler Guides) and are associated with the layer onto which they're placed. You can show and hide ruler guides by showing and hiding the layers that contain them. You can even create layers that contain nothing but ruler guides and then show and hide them as you wish. (See Chapter 6 for more information about layers .)

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You can also place a guide that extends across the page or spread and pasteboard by double-clicking on the vertical or horizontal ruler.

Tip ‚

If you want to create ruler guides for several document pages, create a master page, add the guides to the master page, and then apply the master to the appropriate document pages.

Creating a set of guides automatically

Follow these steps to create a set of ruler guides:

If the documents contains multiple layers, display the Layers pane (Window ‚ Layers or F7) and click the name of the layer to which you want to add guides.

Cross-Reference ‚
See Chapter 6 for more information about layers.
Choose Layout ‚ Create Guides.

The Create Guides dialog box, shown in Figure 7-12, is displayed. Check Preview if you want to see the guides on the current document page as you create them.

Figure 7-12: The Create Guides dialog box, along with the guides it created.
In the Rows and Columns areas specify the number of guides you want to add in the Number fields and, optionally , specify a Gutter width between horizontal (Rows) and vertical (Columns) guides.

Enter 0 in the Gutter fields if you don't want gutters between guides.
In the Options area, click Margins to fit the guides in the margin boundaries; click Page to fit the guides within the page boundary.
Check Remove Existing Ruler Guides to remove any previously placed ruler guides.
When you're done specifying the attributes of the ruler guides, click OK to close the dialog box.

Working with ruler guides

Once you've created ruler guides, you can show or hide them, lock or unlock them, and select and move, copy and paste, or delete one or more guides at a time. Here are a few pointers for working with ruler guides:

To display or hide ruler guides, choose View ‚ Show/Hide Guides or press z +; (semicolon) or Ctrl+; (semicolon).
To lock or unlock all ruler guides, choose View ‚ Lock Guides or press Option+ z +; (semicolon) or Ctrl+Alt+; (semicolon). (If Lock Guides is checked, ruler guides are locked.)
To select a ruler guide, click on it with a selection tool. To select multiple guides, hold down the Shift key and click on them. The color of a selected guide changes from blue to the color of its layer. To select all ruler guides on a page or spread, press Option+ z +G or Ctrl+Alt+G.
To move a guide, click and drag it as you would any object. To move multiple guides, select them and then drag them. To move guides to another page, select them, choose Edit ‚ Cut, or z +X or Ctrl+X, or Edit ‚ Copy, or z +C or Ctrl+C, display the target page, then choose Edit ‚ Paste, or z +V or Ctrl+V. If the target page is the same shape as the source page, the guides are placed in their original position.
To delete ruler guides, select them and then press Delete or Backspace.
To change the color of the ruler guides and the view percentage above which they're displayed (the default view threshold is 5 percent), choose Layout ‚ Ruler Guides. The Ruler Guides dialog box, shown in Figure 7-13, is displayed. Modify the View Threshold value and choose a different color from the Color pop-up menu, and then click OK. If you change the settings in the Ruler Guides dialog box when no documents are open , the new settings become defaults and are applied to all subsequently created documents.

Figure 7-13: The Ruler Guides dialog box.
To display ruler guides behind objects instead of in front, choose InDesign ‚ Preferences ‚ Guides & Pasteboard on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences ‚ Guides & Pasteboard in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K, and check Guides in Back in the Guide Options section of the dialog box.
If the Snap to Guides command (View ‚ Snap to Guides, or Shift+ z +; [semicolon] or Ctrl+Shift+; [semicolon]) is checked, objects edges will snap to ruler guides when you drag them in the snap zone. To specify the snap zone (the distance ‚ in pixels ‚ at which an object will snap to a guide), choose InDesign ‚ Preferences ‚ Guides & Pasteboard on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences ‚ Guides & Pasteboard in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K, and enter a value in the Snap to Zone field in the Guide Options section of the dialog box.

Working with the baseline grid

Every new document you create includes a baseline grid. If the document you're working on uses a multicolumn page layout, a baseline grid can be helpful for aligning text baselines across columns and for ensuring that object edges align with text baselines. Baseline grids aren't much use for small documents ‚ business cards, ads, and so on ‚ and one-column designs. Here's how to create them:

Choose InDesign ‚ Preferences ‚ Grids on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences ‚ Grids in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K and choose the Grids pane.

The Grids pane, shown in Figure 7-14, is displayed.

Figure 7-14: The Grids pane of the Preferences dialog box.
Choose a color from the Color pop-up menu in the Baseline Grid area.
In the Start field, enter the distance between the top of the page and the first grid line.

If you enter , the Increment Every value determines the distance between the top of the page and the first grid line.
Enter the distance between grid lines in the Increment Every field.

Generally, the value you enter in this field will be the same as the leading value you use for the publication's body text.
Choose a View Threshold percentage from the pop-up menu or enter a value in the field.

Generally, you don't want to display the baseline grid at reduced view percentages because grid lines become tightly spaced .
Click OK to close the dialog box and return to the document.

A baseline grid is document-wide (that is, you can't change it from page to page), and grid lines are displayed behind all objects, layers, and ruler guides. The default baseline grid begins a ‚ ½ inch from the top of a document page, the grid lines are light blue lines and placed 1 pica apart; and grid lines are displayed at view percentages above 75 percent. If you change any of these settings when no documents are open, the changes are applied to all subsequently created documents; if a document is open, changes apply only to that document.

Tip ‚

The Show/Hide Baseline Grid command (View ‚ Show/Hide Baseline Grid, or Option+ z +' [apostrophe] or Ctrl+Alt+' [apostrophe]) lets you display and hide a document's baseline grid.

Working with the document grid

Like the baseline grid, every document includes a default document grid, which is a set of horizontal and vertical lines. And like baseline grids, you may or may not find the document grid to be a useful aid for laying out pages. If you like working on graph paper in the real world, the document guide may be just your cup of tea. On the other hand, you may find document grids to be too constricting and opt not to use them. If you want to use document grids, follow these steps:

Choose InDesign ‚ Preferences ‚ Grids on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences ‚ Grids in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K.

The Grids pane displays (refer to Figure 7-14).
Choose a color from the Color pop-up menu in the Document Grid area.
Enter the distance between grid lines in the Gridline Every field.

If your basic measurement unit is an inch, you'll probably want to use the default value of 1 inch.
Enter the number of divisions between grid lines in the Subdivisions field.

If your basic measurement unit is an inch, you can specify a value of 6 to subdivide the grid into 1-pica squares. Or, if you prefer, you can enter a value of 4, 8, 16, and so on to subdivide the grid into standard divisions of an inch.
Click OK to close the dialog box and return to the document.

Tip ‚
The Show/Hide Document Grid command (View ‚ Show/Hide Document Grid or z +' [apostrophe] or Ctrl+' [apostrophe]) lets you display and hide the document grid.