Today’s Photoshop tip will show you how to take advantage of the “Grid” feature in Photoshop. The Grid is the perfect alignment tool for graphic design, and is very easy to use. By combining the use of the Grid with the “Snap” feature, users can perfectly align objects along grid lines and sudivisions.
Enabling the Grid
Open up the document you’d like to work with (or create a new document), and enable the Grid by checking View > Extras, and then checking View > Show > Grid.
You should now see a grid laid over your canvas. The grid lines are not actually a part of your image, they are more or less just reference lines.
Note: The Grid Lines are the darker lines. The light, dotted lines are known as “Subdivisions”.
Grid Preferences
Perhaps you need to adjust the grid to better suit your working conditions. It’s very easy to setup grid lines to distance themselves in inches, pixels, as well as other standard measurement units.
To adjust the Grid Preferences, go to Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices…
From here, you can adjust the Grid Color, Style (Lines, Dashed Lines, Dotted Lines), the distance between grid line, and the number of subdivisions between grid lines.
Snap to Grid
Snapping is a useful feature in Photoshop that allows users to align layers, shapes, text, etc, perfectly with other objects, guides, or in our case the grid.
To enable Snap to Grid, first Enable Snap (View > Snap), and then make sure Snap to Grid is checked (View > Snap To > Grid).
You should now be able to easily align your different layers with the grid PRECISELY.
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I really love these tutorials, so informative yet simple.
Just a little tip, snapping is really useful and I use it in most cases, but sometimes I don’t want it to snap and it’s a drag to go to View>Snap To (at least for me). So when using the move tool or the transform command, just hold Control and the object you’re moving will not snap to anything.
Keep up the great work!
ctrl ‘ will also toggle the grid.
Cheers.
In your DOP tut, u guys gave an exapmle using a grid that simulated a 3d plane. is there such an option or did u just use Transform?. thx for the guide top class stuff.
Hey Nir B, in the Depth of Field Tutorial, I just transform a grid to get that effect. I just used the default grid settings (which I shouldn’t have really). Hope that helps ya out
I’d appreciate if you ask such questions in the actual tutorial in question so that other users don’t miss out, or get confused.
Very helpful, I can’t say how many times I try to move my pictures precisely and I never get it right. This will help a million. Thanks
I use grids alot when designing, it comes as a natural thing to do now so if your a begginner at designing, then i urge you to follow this tutorial and try adapt it as frequently as possible. It will deffinetly benefit you for future stuff
Even if it comes naturally to you, I am a firm believer that Grid Systems are an excellent way to facilitate design and creativity. We’ll probably cover more on Grid Systems in Photoshop in a future tutorial
I love these basic tutorials - so quick!
I’m not using grid when im working. I think i will use it now,
Grid guide in a nutshell… excellent.