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| Guides, Grids and Slices |
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| Written by Mike Otley | |||
| Sunday, 11 March 2007 10:02 | |||
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{mosimage width=125}Using Photoshop’s ‘Guides, Grid & Slices’ as a compositional tool Technique. In this first of an occasional series, SigmaUser Mike Otley takes us through using Photoshp's Guides, Grids and Slices as a compositional tool. Whilst every effort is made to get the crop right when exposing an image, most camera’s have an element of cropping in the viewfinder that means there is more image in the actual capture when viewed on the computer. This is because very few viewfinders will actually show 100% of the view seen at the moment of exposure. An SLR will typically have a Field of View of around 95%. Photoshop users will be aware that it’s possible to place a grid over their image to help align verticals and horizons etc and that the grid can be invoked by keying Ctrl-‘.However, it’s also possible to modify that grid so that it shows a ‘Rule Of Thirds’ overlay on the image to help with compositional cropping in Photoshop. How do we do this?Go to ‘Edit – Preferences – Guides, Grid & Slices…’. Assuming this has been left at ‘Default’, you will see the following:- {mosimage width=500}
We will change some parameters in the ‘Grid’ section only of the window that appears. The changes are shown below :-
{mosimage width=500}
The choice of gridline colour is not arbitrary; make your own choice from the drop-down menu. ‘Custom’ is the default setting. Leave ‘Style:’ set to ‘Lines’ ‘Gridline every:’ needs to be set to 33.33 and select ‘Percent’ from the drop-down menu to the right of ‘Gridlines every:’ Change ‘Subdivisions:’ to ‘1’ That’s it. Now when you key Ctrl-‘ with your image on display, you will see a grid representing the ‘Rule Of Thirds’ overlaid on top e.g. :- {mosimage width=500}
I tend to use an ordinary geometry set ‘set-square’ to check my verticals but should the reader wish to switch between the standard grid and the ‘ROT’ version, I’m sure an ‘Action’ can be written to take care of this! If you do write this ‘Action’ please send me a copy!
Mike Otley-Jan 2007
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