Adobe Photoshop CS - Setting Guides, Grid, and Slices Preferences - Task 6

How To Setting Guides, Grid, and Slices Preferences

 In Adobe Photoshop CS

The default color for guides and slices in Photoshop is light blue. When you are

working on an image that contains the color blue or if you just don’t like the

default color, you can change the color of these helpful guides, grids, and slices to

a more suitable color using the Guides, Grid & Slices preferences dialog box.

1. If you are a Macintosh user, go to the Photoshop menu and select

Preferences ➪ Guides, Grid & Slices to bring up this dialog box. As a

Windows user, select Edit ➪ Preferences and select Guides, Grid &

Slices. If you are in the dialog box from the previous task, select

Guides, Grid & Slices from the drop-down menu at the top of the

dialog box. See Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1: The Guides, Grid & Slices preference dialog box

2. To change the color of the guides, select from a predetermined list of

colors in the drop-down menu or select Custom to pick your own

color. If you select Custom, Photoshop’s color picker pops up. Select

the color you want and then press OK. The default guide color is

light blue.

3. You can choose among two styles for guides: Lines (default) and

Dashed Lines.

4. To change the color settings of the grid, you can select a color to

your liking from a pre-determined list of colors in the drop-down

menu or pick your own color by selecting Custom. If you select

Custom, you’ll get Photoshop’s color picker (see Figure 6-2), which

enables you to select the color you want. Press OK when finished.

5. You can choose from three styles for the lines: Lines (default),

Dashed Lines, and Dots (see Figure 6-3).

Figure 6-2: Selecting a custom color for guides

Figure 6-3: An example of a grid set to dots with two guides

6. If you want, you can change the intervals of the grid-line. A grid-line

can be placed at any number of units per pixels, inches, cm (centimeters),

mm (millimeters), points, picas, or percent.You can also select

the number of subdivision lines that occur in between each grid-line.

7. You can change the line color for slices, but only to a set of nine colors.

The default color is, once again, light blue.

8. When you create slices with the Slice tool, they are automatically

numbered starting with the first slice at the top left corner of the

image. If you select Show Slice Numbers under Slices you can make

those numbers visible.

tips

• You might want to change the default colors for the slices and guides to a color

that stands out more against image-rich designs.

Try neon green (R: 153, G: 255, B: 0), or any other neon color.

• Keeping numbers on the slices is helpful for a couple of reasons. It helps in

the automatic numbering of file names when creating Web-ready graphics out of 

the Slices. It also makes it easier to update only a slice of an image rather than 

having to rename the images all over again.

cross-reference

• Guides are created after clicking rulers in an image area and dragging them

into view. To learn more about rulers, see Task 26.