The Ruler tool helps you position items and measure the distance from one point to another. You can create and save a Tool Preset for any tool, which will remember settings that you choose for that tool, so you can quickly and easily select different presets and settings for a particular tool. You can reset any tool back to its default settings by right clicking on the Tool Presets button and select Reset Tool. Click and drag to draw a line, horizontally or vertically on a part of the image that should be level, such as the surface of water, or the side of a building. Although that works great, I usually straighten my images while cropping. When cropping you will see gridlines on the image and it's easy to align these with a horizontal or vertical line.
Overview of measurement and alignment features
Measurements are shown on the Options Bar. To create a grid that displays the “Rule of Thirds” overlay, choose Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices. To place a single guide at a specific location in a documents, choose View > New Guide. To add a guide using the rulers, click in the ruler area, and drag the guide into the document. Option -click (Mac) Alt -click (Win) on a guide to delete it. Double click on a guide to display the Guides, Grid, & Slides Preferences. To add multiple guides at one time, choose View > New Guide Layout. Select the Target (Canvas, Artboard, Selected Artboards), guide color, number of Columns and Rows, Width, Height, Gutters, Margin amount and whether or not to Center the Columns and Clear Existing Guides. Choose Presets and select Save Preset to save the guide layout for future use. Option + Shift -click (Mac) | Alt + Shift -click (Win) on a guide to select multiple guides. Then, with the same keyboard modifiers, drag to reposition multiple guides at once. To create a guides based on a shape, choose View > New Guide From Shape. And you’re not limited to only shape layers, you can create Guides from Type layers and pixel based layers!
To reposition a guide using the Move tool, position the Move tool directly on top of the guide. Shift-drag a guide to snap it to the ruler tic marks. Command + Option + “;” (Mac) | Control + Alt + “;” (Win) locks/unlocks guides (View > Lock Guides). When changing image size of a document, unlock the guides to resize the guides proportionally. Guides (and paths) can be difficult to see on high resolution monitors because they are anti-aliased. To make them appear thicker, select Preferences > Performance. In the Graphics Processor Settings, click Advanced Settings and uncheck Anti-alias Guides and Paths. To change the color of selected guides, first select the guides, then choose View > Edit Selected Guides and use the Color options to change the color.
Smart Guides can be tremendously helpful for aligning and determining distances between multiple layers as they are being repositioned within a document. If you Zoom into an image above 500%, a Pixel Grid is displayed on top of the image. This can be especially helpful when trying to align shapes such as rectangles so that they begin and end on a full pixel (to avoid anti-aliased edges). The first shape was drawn with the Snap Vector Tools and Transforms to Pixel Grid preference turned on. The middle illustration was drawn with the Snap Vector Tools and Transforms to Pixel Grid preference turned off. The final illustration is the same rectangle as in the second illustration ( the Snap Vector Tools and Transforms to Pixel Grid preference was turned off), however the Align Edges option was enabled for the rectangle shape layer (in the Options bar) after drawing the rectangle. Enabling the Align Edges option “jumped” the fill of the rectangle to the nearest pixel grid (you can still see that the original shape (the black path), is not aligned to the pixel grid, but the fill is being forced to Align Edges to the edges of the pixel grid.
Unit and ruler customization
Is there a way to get my ruler tool in photoshop to measure in millimeters instead of pixels? Yes, it works. You can check the measurements in the Info panel where the measurements are in millimeters as well as the rulers. To toggle the rulers at the top and left sides of a Photoshop document on or off, select View| Rulers from the Menu Bar. The rulers in Photoshop help you make measurements. To change the units of measurement shown within the rulers, right-click either ruler. To change where the origin point (0) appears on the rulers, click and drag from the upper-left corner, where the rulers meet, down and to the right. The position at which you release the mouse pointer then becomes the new origin point for both rulers. To change the default unit of measurement that appears in the rulers, select Edit| Preferences| Units & Rulers… from the Menu Bar to open the Units & Rulers settings within the Preferences dialog box. Then select the desired default units of measurement to show on the rulers from the Rulers drop-down in the Units section.
The grid in Photoshop can also help you to place content within Photoshop documents. To turn the grid on or off, select View| Show| Grid. The grid appears the same for all documents, unlike guides, which you can customize for each document. To change the default appearance of the grid, select Edit| Preferences| Guides, Grid & Slices… and adjust Gridline Every and Subdivisions to suit your workflow. The grid can help you align and layout content in a Photoshop document.
Pixels, points, and picas are measurement options for the ruler in Photoshop.
Photoshop is a powerful image editing software developed by Adobe Systems. It allows users to manipulate and enhance digital images and graphics with a wide range of tools and features. Photoshop has a range of advanced features, including the ability to remove unwanted objects from photos, merge multiple images, create 3D graphics, and apply special effects and filters. It also offers support for plugins and scripting, which extends its capabilities even further. Photoshop is widely used in industries such as graphic design, photography, web design, and advertising, among others. It is considered the industry standard for image editing software and is continually updated with new features and improvements to keep up with evolving technology and user needs.
Practical workflow for measuring with the ruler
Complete question discussion: Which are measurement options for the ruler in Photoshop? Look at the image, set a couple guides to mark your distance (a start and end distance). In this case, a known distance of say 1 foot or 5 feet or 10 feet or 25. I’m assuming the distance will be either horizontal or vertical instead of diagonal (diagonal is fine, but the flow for this one will need to change). Switch to your Ruler tool (the letter I or go to the tools palette and find your ruler with the eyedropper tools). Make sure you have the Info palette up, too (in Palette Options, change mouse coordinates to pixels). Now, hold down Shift, position the ruler crosshairs on the first guide, click and hold with the mouse and drag to the second guide. Snap should help with getting the guides just right. For example, if the image is 300 dpi and you have 3 feet per 2 inch (or 600 pixels per 3 feet), that’s 200 pixels per foot. To make 1 inch into 1 foot, convert the image in the Image Size palette to 200 dpi, but deselect Resample image. There won’t be any change in the number of pixels, but your inches will increase. When you’re done, do the conversion back to 300.
- Use Tool Presets to quickly switch between measurement setups.
- Create and manage guides and grids for precise alignment and distance capturing.
- Leverage Smart Guides and Pixel Grid for high-precision placements at high zoom levels.
- Adjust units and origin points to match your project’s requirements.
Save early.
