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!

Other posts you will enjoy:

1. Quick Tip Tuesday – Are you on the level? I’m neck-deep in yearbooks this time of year – one just about done, the other barely underway! One thing that comes up over and over, I thought I should share with you.  It makes me CRAZY...
2. Quick Tip Tuesday – Any One for a Quickie? (Jenn and I are posting some of the best content from Jenn’s Design Blog – scrapkittydesign.com. Here’s one, er, no three we had forgotten about – and all three great tips!) Alright – here’s three tips...
3. Quick Tip Tuesday – Seeing Little Blue Men? I thought I was seeing things… a whole page of little blue men!  But no, it was just improperly color-balanced photos! But it gave me a chance to give you something JUST FOR PSE USERS!!  (whoohoo...
4. Quick Tip Tuesday – Digiscrap Designer Tips There are lots of tips and tricks I’ve learned while working to create pretty, useful digiscrap kits – and I’m going to start sharing some of them here with you! We’re starting a new designer class...
5. Quick Tip Tuesday – Super RE-size Me! Often when I make a layout, I’m not quite sure what size I want things to be until I get them on the page and start moving them around. Resizing a layer is different in PS...