|
|
 |
Tutorial:
Snap & Snap To |
||
Have you ever resized or cropped something in Photoshop, only to have it 'jump' by larger amounts than you would have liked, making it difficult to do what you want with precision? You probably have the Snap option set. The good news is, you can turn it off and work more precisely, and even more good news is that it can actually come in quite handy!
|
||
 |
Having the snap option on means that selections snap to, or automatically align with things such as grids, guides, and document boundaries. To turn it on, open a document and go to the View menu and select Snap. This places a check mark next to this option to tell you that it is activated. To turn it off, simply repeat the previous step and the check mark will not be shown, telling you that Snap is deactivated. |
|
 |
Snap works alongside various other options, which are found under the View -> Snap To menu. You can check or uncheck snap to Guides, Grid, Layers, Slices, and/or Document Bounds (dependant upon your settings under View -> Show). Alternatively, you can select snap to All or None. Let's work on an example to put this into practice... |
|
For this example, place a check mark next to View -> Snap To -> Grid (make sure View -> Show -> Grid is at least selected first). Once you see the grid, you can adjust the settings for it under Edit -> Preferences -> Guides, Grid, Slices & Count, by changing the values in the Grid section next to Gridline every and Subdivisions, as desired. Have a play with these settings and see what effect they have on the grid that is shown in your document.
HANDY TIP! Toggle the display of gridlines on or off by pressing Ctrl+' (Ctrl and apostrophe)! |
||
To work with Snap, it helps to see these gridlines that it aligns with. Now, in your document, click on the Crop Tool. Click and drag anywhere on your document to perform a sample crop, and without releasing your mouse button yet, increase and decrease the size of the crop slightly, to see how the outline 'snaps' to position. This can also be frustrating when you want to crop precisely, so remember that you can easily turn snap on and off as described previously. Try both with and without Snap on and see the difference that it makes.
|
||
Another example is how you can drag elements around in your document using the Move Tool, and have them 'snap' to the grid. This is especially useful when lining up alphas or elements alongside each other with precision. Try it, by dragging another element into your document and moving it around with the Move Tool, to see how it snaps into place as you go.
|
||
No more guessing and using your eye to see if your elements are perfectly in line or not now! Just turn Snap on and off as required and do it the easy and precise way!
|
||
 |
||
