Quick Tip Tuesday – Do you play by the rules?

I’m a first child, and thus the rule-follower by nature.  But never more so than when I scrap!  “Rules? WHAT rules?” I hear you say! “Oh crud, I’ve been scrapping all this time and never knew there were RULES?”

Never fear – I mean the RULERS in Photoshop!  I can’t scrap without my rulers turned on!  Why?

I like to print my layouts at 12×12 inches, which is pretty big.  But until I get that gonzo monitor I’m jonesing for (hint, hint, honey) I can’t view my layouts in real size.  And I find that I tend to make things too big!

Since I’m a paper-style scrapper (for the most part) I like things to be about the size you might see them in real life.  So while a 4 inch paperclip  might be possible, it’s not likely, and I don’t want it on my layout!  So having rulers handy helps me keep things in perspective size-wise.  But did you know you have OPTIONS on your rulers?  Here’s where to find them:

First, to see the rulers, go up to the menus and click on View>Rulers

Now you will see rulers appear at the top and left edges of your window.  The zeroes will be at the top left corner.  If you zoom out, the zeroes stay there, and the rulers start counting backwards!

To access the options, you need to go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences (at the bottom):

Then choose Units & Rulers. In the top box, you’ll see the Units options, click on Rulers and you’ll see your choices!  If you prefer working in pixels, just choose that, then your rulers will display pixels.  If you’re metrically inclined, you can do the cm/mm thing!  I like having mine on inches, but sometimes if I want more fine control, I’ll change it to pixels.

There’s a LOT of other cool things in these preferences dialogs, poke around and see what you find. Let me know what things you find useful, and I’ll include them in a future post!

Happy Scrapping!