Photoshop smallest unit is pixel?

Question

I'm trying to do graphic design in Photoshop, a flyer, and I would like to align things with precision to millimeters (mm).Let's imagine a 148 x 210 mm .PSD document.If you make maximum zoom to the doc and put a guideline at 7mm, and try to align or draw something right glued to it, YOU CAN'T! You can't because from the start of the document to the guideline you wouldn't get a precise number of pixels, you would get a float number of pixels. Like 1 mm is 2,8 px (or whatever). As much as I try, I can't align in-between pixel measures! I can't align to millimeters (mm)!
Is this just the way it is? Or is there a workaround?

Bojan Živković11378569 · Accepted Answer

In Photoshop (and not only) smallest unit is pixel. Pixel can not be divided. Pixel can have only one color. Similarly if you want to paint half pixel red and half blue because precision in some other measurement unit, it won't work.

There is option in Preferences > Tools > Snap Vector Tools and Transforms to Pixel Grid. Even if you turn this option off it won't be very useful becuse there isn't smaller unit and anti-aliasing will be introduced as already explained by D Fosse.

D Fosse · Answer

Still, Photoshop works in pixels. It cannot output anything smaller than a pixel. Everything you do will eventually snap to the nearest full pixel.

It's possible to set vector tools to work independently of the pixel grid, but in that case you get anti-aliasing in the final result (bleeding into neighboring pixels to simulate the in-between position).

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