Photoshop Tutorial

Creating Rule of Thirds Grid

For Photoshop CS and 7.0.1


Monday, December 18, 2006

The rule of thirds is a compositional technique used mostly in photography. You will see this technique used in film media, also. If you sit back and look at professional art, photography, printed media, etc... you will see this technique used more often than not. Also, certain filmmakers have adopted use of this technique in their films. In order to make sure that your eye stays "true" and the four points stay equidistant (the picture is divided into nine equal parts - 3 by 3), I have written this simple tutorial in order to give a way to speed up production of prints and at the same time not lose the quality.

NOTE: If you use your grid for something else, do not continue. You might try a layer-based overlay or action-based implementation. However, if you would really like to try this, you should write all your settings down first. Ok, now we are ready. Lets go!

Pre-work steps:

  1. Launch Photoshop.
  2. Click Edit -> Preferences -> Guides, Grid & Slices... and a dialog will appear. Alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+K and then Ctrl+6 to launch this dialog to the proper section. A PS7 example is shown below:

    Guides, Grid & Slices
  3. What you need to focus on is the Grid area box. Choose the color by using the color selector on the right side or the drop down. I usually use the default for color photos. If you do a lot of black and white work, it might be best to use a nice blue or red.
  4. Next you have the choice of Lines, Dashed Lines or Dots. Choose which one helps you focus best and not distract too much.
  5. The best way to visually divide a Photoshop image into vertical and horizontal thirds, no matter the resolution or ratio, use a percentage (33.33%) and a subdivision of 1. Click Ok.
  6. Wait! Where is the grid? In order to use the grid, it must be toggled. We will explore that in the production area below.

Production steps:

  1. Let's try this method on an image. The way I like to tackle this task is to start out with a target ratio and resolution. We need to create a new image by clicking File -> New... or Ctrl+N.
  2. Make it a ratio of 3:2 and 300dpi. So this would be something like 1800x1200 pixels @ 300dpi for a 6" x 4" photo layout. Once you set everything up in the dialog box, you can click Ok. A new blank image will appear, possibly with or without gridlines.
  3. Toggle the visible gridlines so that they show by clicking View -> Show -> Grid or Ctrl+'.
  4. Open up your source image. Drag the layer into the new image..
  5. Resize/arrange the layer image (Ctrl+T) if it is too small and move it around as you inspect a final position. Take care to line up focal points of interest on one or more intersections of the grid. Do not apply the transformation until you are satisfied with the composition. Transformation application causes resampling damage everytime it is executed, so if you must do it, do it only once!
  6. If you have done a transformation, hit Enter to apply. Otherwise, once everything is composed to your liking, you can save and export the image.

What is the rule of thirds?