How to use guide lines in Photoshop

In my opinion one of the guidelines are one of the best and most useful features Photoshop has to offer, let me walk you through the basics.

Open a random picture in Photoshop and press V to choose the Move Tool.

To activate the Photoshop guidelines, first you need to activate the Rulers.

If you cant' see the rulers, press Ctrl + R to activate them.

Now let's see if you have the Snap feature turned on.

In the menu click View and activate the Snap, then click Snap To and be sure to have the Guides option activated as well.

Let's say we want a guideline going horizontally through the middle of the picture. Click and hold the horizontal ruler (see picture) ...

... and drag it down to the middle of your image.

If you approach to middle of the picture slowly you should notice the guideline finding the half way of the picture automatically. The guideline "gets stuck" right at the half of an image. This is the Snap feature we activated in step 2 of the tutorial.

Now let's do the same thing with the vertical guideline.

Just bring it to the half of your image.

Ok, you should now have your image divided into for even areas/rectangles. Let's now add some white lines using the guidelines.

Create a new layer.

Choose the Rectangle Marque Tool.

Now create a selection the same way I did. And notice as you approach to the guidelines your selection rectangle sticks to them like a magnet, again it's the Snap feature.

And this is why the guideline are so cool, whatever selection tool or drawing tool you are using, guidelines will help you at being very accurate when you need to be accurate and precise.

Right click the selection and choose Stroke...

Enter the Width of the line, choose white color and choose Center for a location.

Click OK.

And there is your first white border.

Now do the same thing (step 9 to 11) with the remaining three rectangle areas.

Let me now show you that guidelines don't apply only to selection tools but you can use them with all sorts of drawing tools as well, let's try with a rectangle.

Again, Create a new layer.

Choose the Rectangle Tool ...

... and choose the Fill pixels option (see picture).

Set a new foreground color ...

... and draw a rectangle in one of the four even areas.

Again, notice the rectangle snap to the guidelines the same way it did when using a selection tool.

You can now drag the rectangle layer under the white lines layer and set the rectangle's layer opacity to about 20%.

To remove the guidelines simply click and hold them ...

... then drag them back into the ruler.

The opposite of what you do when you want to bring them to you image.

If you have a lots of guidelines that you want to get rid of all at once, then go to View and choose Clear Guides.

And here's the end result. Hope you now understand the basic meaning of lines, why you need them and how to use them.

In case you need some extra help, advise or just want to add something, don't hesitate and drop a Comment.