Guides

Guides, in a sense, serve as custom gridlines. You put a guideline into position so that you can align selections to it. Ideally, you would add a guideline in a location where no gridline occurs or when you want to use guidelines rather than the grid. Also, because guidelines appear in blue, you can add a guideline to highlight an important grid location. The fastest way to add guidelines is from the ruler.

1. Click on View . The View menu will appear.

2. Click on Rulers if required. The rulers will appear immediately in the current image window.

   

3. Place the mouse pointer over the vertical or horizontal ruler. Positioning over a horizontal ruler will result in a horizontal guideline, whereas positioning over a vertical ruler will give you a vertical guideline.

4. Click and drag from the ruler onto your image. A guideline will appear.

   

Locking Guides

You can lock guides to prevent any accidental guideline changes. (For example, you could mistakenly move a guideline rather than the selection, especially when the selection falls very close to the guideline.) When you need to change guidelines, unlock them first.

Note

Locking guidelines doesn't prevent you from clearing them. If you unintentionally clear guidelines, immediately undo the change.

1. Click on View . The View menu will appear.

2. Click on Lock Guides . Photoshop will immediately lock the guides into position. A check mark will appear beside the Lock Guides command on the menu.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to unlock the guides.

   

Removing Guides

When you are finished using your guides, you can clear them all with the Clear Guides command.

1. Click on View . The View menu will appear.

2. Click on Clear Guides . The guides will be removed.