Photoshop Tutorials: Things You Probably Don’t Know [But Can't Live Without]

How to find the dead centre of a document in Photoshop using guides.

Step 1: Create a new document
First things first, you’re going to need a blank document to work with. File > New, then pick any dimensions your heart so desires — it’s not important what you choose; I chose a landscape A4 (29.7 x 21cm for the American readers) document.

Step 2: Find the middle
Now that you have a blank document, click View (in the File menu) > New Guide. A dialogue box should appear where you can choose between horizontal and vertical guides and where they will be positioned, with the default measurement being in pixels. I’m sure most of you know about guides, but what some people don’t know is that you can choose your guides in percentages.

Keeping the default vertical guide selected, type in 50% into the “Position” box. Click OK.

Voilà, a guide showing you the exact position of the centre of your document. I told you this was going to be straight-forward.

More tips:

• For more awesomeness, turn on “Snap to Guides” by clicking “View > Snap To > Guides. This tells Photoshop to snap everything you drag around to the guides. Very useful for lining up layers I can assure you.
• You can experiment with different guide positions by entering percentages such as 33.33% and 66.66% for a document you want split into thirds (trifold brochures are a good example of somewhere this could be applied).

That’s all for now. Make sure to click the big shiny button below if you would like to request a tutorial.

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• Photoshop Tutorials: Making the Most of an Average Photo–Part I January 7, 2010

Tags: Program Learning, Styrus Updates