P: Custom Guides (groupable, colorable, nameable guides)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi! I've been thinking this for quite a while, and I know most of the web designers out there have the same need... groupable, colorable, nameable guides.

It's important to use guides. But sometimes it gets a little messy.

What would be perfect is if guides had their own layer-style format. And each group, or layer, had an asigned color. You could turn on and off visibility of specific groups, or just turn them all off by hitting cmd + H, as we do today.

This would make photoshop THE perfect software for web design.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Great point FedericP.

Have you tried to use Paths as guides? You can use path tool to draw your own, custom guides.

But there is a little problem with it. The displayed Path will take a precedence when attempting Free Transform.
Here's how to 'trick' Photoshop.

Select targeted Layer and select your Path 'guide'. Press cmd-h to hide the path - initiate Free Transform on targeted Layer - press cmd-h to view path again - continue Free Transform on the targeted Layer while viewing the paths as your guide.

A little work around, but an excellent way to follow precise custom guides - without guides! ;)

I hope this helps 😉

[ted.t]

Enable guides to be placed in a layer set so they can be copied to other files for use as a template and have multiple sets of guides - handy for more complex layouts (different sets can be turned on/off).

[Guest]

I agree, many colors and groups for guides would help very much, as well as the possibility to save such groups and reuse them in other docs. To the same time a more differentiated removement would also be helpful. Not only one or all. We would be able to select many and remove them in one go.

Colored guides

Of course in the ideal case, we would be able to color/recolor them anytime.
But even a simplified version would help: having 2 or 3 standard colored guides and creating them holding an additional key. Hence our guides would look as currently, but holding down CTR while creation we would obtain the second color and pressing ALT instead would lead to the third color. I suppose that 3 colors would be able to answer the most of our needs.

Group and delete guides

Do we currently double click a guide, then the preferences dialog appears. I suggest to open a guide manager instead, when we hold down CTR or ALT while double clicking. Photoshop would list there the guides and allow them to be grouped or deleted.

Thanks, Michael

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I think it'd be great if we could potentially color code and label every smart guide. Maybe by right clicking a smart guide. It would also be sweet to even have smart guide layers. So if you have a giant master copy of a file you could have different sets of smart guides you can turn on and off to show various grided sets you've made. I deal with this on a daily basis. It would prove incredibly helpful when we port games to different screen sizes for mobile. Otherwise I end up making vector lines on layers that just represent those sizes. It ends up adding more confusion to my documents.

These improvements would greatly improve my Adobe experience.

[davide83533667]

Have an easy way to save guide to transfer them to different document and be able to create guide by the path tool. Also have a guides for CD labels.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Customize guide lines:
Being able to change color / group them into folders (show / hide). In this way we can differentiate and segment.

[happybana0]

Saveable Guide Sets:
It would be great if there was a way of saving and swapping out sets of guides in Photoshop, so one can avoid cluttering up and confusing oneself with dozens of guidelines all over the screen.

[jjwithers]

I often add two sets of guides to a document in photoshop. One may be a trim size and another is the 'live' area.
Sometimes there are guides for alignment and other guides for cropping.
Please add the ability to create guides of different color on the same document? It would help organize all the blue lines currently on my files.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It seems that guides are applied to the entire photoshop project, I would like to be able to save guides to a layer so that I can turn them on and off and then have multiple guide layers.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi Adobe, Just want some minor request, id been using photoshop for years. Just wondering if you guys can come up with a feature that will allow users to make the rulers have different colours. Many users uses rulers like crazy just like me and its a bit confusing seeing all the rulers in blue color.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hallo,

Eine wirkliche Neuerung wäre es, wenn man die einzelnen Hilfslinien gruppieren könnte.
Ich arbeite sehr viel mit Photshop und entwerfe da zb. Mehrseitige Layout ́s wo ich auch eine große Menge Hilfslinien für die einzelnen Layout ́s habe.

Schön wäre es um mehr übersicht zu haben, die mehrere Hilfslinien in einer Gruppe zu grupieren die man getrennt von anderen Hilfslinien ausblenden könnte.

Viele Grüße und Danke für euer wundervolles Produkt.

[J453]

Melissa's translation:

Hello,

A real innovation there, if you want to group the individual guides could be.
I work a lot with Photshop and designing since eg. S multi-page layout, where I also have a large amount of auxiliary lines for each layout's have.

It would be nice to have more overview, the Grupi several guides a group in which one could hide separated from other guides.

Many greetings and thanks for your wonderful product.

[el Fakir]

Hi there!

I agree with Anna and Emily. Multiple guides sets could be really interesting: I'm wireframing quite a lot with Photoshop, and I use guides all the time. I like to keep my guides in case I have to enhance later an already worked out area, but then, my stage becomes easily noisy and it's hard to find my kittens.

One workaround could consist in using shared objects, to get one set per object, but it's not the main purpose of these and it could add unneeded complexity.

With JavaScript for the activeDocument, is it possible to retrieve the document guides list? Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't find anything like that with CS5. It could be helpful to create a panel to store/retrieve guides sets into document metadata.

el'

[el Fakir]

Hi there!

I agree with Anna and Emily. Multiple guides sets could be really interesting: I'm wireframing quite a lot with Photoshop, and I use guides all the time. I like to keep my guides in case I have to enhance later an already worked out area, but then, my stage becomes easily noisy and it's hard to find my kittens.

One workaround could consist in using shared objects, to get one set per object, but it's not the main purpose of these and it could add unneeded complexity.

With JavaScript for the activeDocument, is it possible to retrieve the document guides list? Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't find anything like that with CS5. It could be helpful to create a panel to store/retrieve guides sets into document metadata.

el'

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Check out Paul Riggott’s Script here:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/932834...

[el Fakir]

Rooooohhhh, great! ;o)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Multiple Guide Colors. Have one color guides for my slices, another for image alignment, etc.

[powal1234]

The same point goes to slices - if there was some sort of slice Layers, groups or colors it'd make things much easier! 🙂

[joerivera]

I'd like to propose a new layer type — Guide Layers.

Guide Layers would be layers that solely contain guides. They would be individually lockable and the guide color could be assigned on a per-layer basis. Guides within the layer could be moved individually, with multiple selected or as a whole by moving the guide layer as you would any other layer. This would be an invaluable tool for mocking up complex interactive products.

An example:
When working on a site I will create one PSD per major interaction (let's use site registration as an example). The site itself will use a base grid, which will be part of my PSD template. Ideally, the base grid would always be locked. Each part of the registration interaction (which coud include several pages) will be housed in a layer folder of its own. Each one of those interactions will require some guides to help with positioning. However, those guides will only be relevant to elements witin that one layer folder.

Currently, all guides show all the time (unlike Illustrator and InDesign, which keep guides attached to layers and allow you to toggle them on and off). You can only toggle all guides binarily on/off and you have no way of easily hiding a subset of guides. The only workaround is to create a separate PSD for each interaction/page — which leads to a complex, file management nightmare (not to mention a waste of time/disk space, etc.)

This change would be a huge boost in productivity and I hope you'll seriously consider it.

Thanks,
Joe

[powal1234]

Hey,

I tought the same way about that, introducing a new layer could be a pretty good solution.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It would be so useful to implement the guide layers that are being talked about on here. As others have said, have your own layers panel for guides, being able to lock/unlock, colour code, label etc.

This would be brilliant.

Thanks

Stew

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

There is a suggestion for “Reference line” of Photoshop.
When I design the layout of website, I use lots of reference lines for difference areas, such as header, nav, content and footer. Sometimes I put lots of lines and frames for a “LIST” in the content area. It will be very hard to recognize the reference lines for the LIST in the content, footer or header. If any function could set different colors of reference lines for difference areas I set, pls keep me informed. Also if I can group the reference lines then set hiding or appearing, that will be wonderful.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hello,

It will perfect with this feature, but why this feature is not already in ? well, wait and see.

Have a good day !
Low

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have been looking for this function for over 2 years. I thought I was to stupid to understand how to do this.

I couldn't imagine in my wildest fantasy that Adobe had over looked such a vital function in a program that is entirely layer based!

Please add this function ASAP. I'm swearing every day over the lack of this functionality...

[JeffN3]

Here is another "Guides" request.
I have a need for multiple colored guides. Photoshop allows one color of guides.
I often have images that I need to provide cropping guides for the client. And often the same photo needs to be cropped several different ways depending on the final use. It would be valuable to be able to put more than one set of guides using different colors to show the different cropping uses. The same can be said for marking trim and cropped areas using different colored guides.

Jeff N