In the Lightroom 5 beta, you can choose to display guides in the Library (while in Loupe view), the Develop module and during Tethered Capture by selecting View > Loupe Overlay > Guides. To toggle the display of the overlay, select Guides from the menu (or use Command + Option + O (Mac) | Control + Alt + O (Win).
To reposition the guides, Command (Mac) | Control (Win) -drag the intersection of the guides.
To quickly set guides in the center of any size and/or resolution Photoshop document, set the Preferences for Units & Rulers to Percentage, show your Rulers (Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + R), and record an action dragging guides to the 50% marks. (You can also select View > New Guide to place the guide at the 50% mark instead of dragging it out from the rulers.) Next time you need guides, simply play the action. For more information about creating actions, please see:
Basic Actions and Batch Processing
In this episode of The Complete Picture, learn how you can accomplish more in less time using actions and batch processing in PSCS3’s to streamline your workflow and minimize repetitive tasks.
Advanced Actions, Droplets and Scripts
In this episode of The Complete Picture, take automation to a new level in PSCS3 by mastering complex actions in order to turn several steps into a single click. Discover droplets, integration with LR and scripts.
PSCS5 – Command Option (Mac) / Control Alt (Win) + H has always hidden extras such as selection edges, Grid and Guides. Now, when you first use the shortcut, Photoshop will give the option to choose whether to hide extras or hide Photoshop making it easier to choose OS-standard behavior on the Macintosh. In order to define what is an “extra” choose View > Show > Show Extra Options and select from the list.
When aligning layers, it’s best to turn on Smart Guides. Use the Move tool to reposition the layers – Smart Guides automatically appear when they are aligned at top, center, bottom, left or right.
Place a guide numerically using View / New Guide and Lock using View / Lock Guides or Command + Option (Mac) / Control + Alt (Win) + “;” . And finally, when dragging out a guide from the rulers, Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) toggles the orientation of the guide (vertical to horizontal).
To change the image size of a document and have the guides in the image resize proportionally, be sure to unlock them by unchecking the View > Lock Guides menu item. If you need them to stay in place, then lock the guides before resizing.
To reposition a guide using the Move tool, position the Move tool directly on top of the guide. When the icon changes to a double headed arrow, click and drag to reposition the guide. Drag a guide outside of the image area to quickly delete it. Shift-drag a guide to snap it to the ruler tic marks even is the “snap to” option is turned off (View / Snap To…).
Use Preferences / Guides, Grid & Slices to control the Style, Color, and Grid line spacing and subdivisions. Yes, this means that guides can be a soothing neutral gray, not Cyan or Magenta!
To quickly display rulers at the top and left of an image, click the View Extras icon in the new Application Bar in Photoshop CS4 and select Show Rulers from the drop down menu, or use the keyboard shortcut, Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + R to toggle the rulers visibility. Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + “;” toggles the visibility of guides and Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + ‘ toggles visibility of grids.
