jimh12345 Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 Someone take pity on me - and tell me how to display a composition grid of thirds. I click Vew/Show grid. I get no grid. I Google and find out about View/Grid and Axis. I go there, click Show Grid, mode is Automatic. I get no grid. I go to Basic tab, get a very dense grid. I try increasing spacing, but it maxes out at 256px. I try changing Divisions to 3. Nothing changes. I go to Advanced tab, and see a hundred options I don't understand. I give up at this point. Is there a simple way to get a grid of thirds? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 Try this... Notice the Percent checkbox near the bottom on the panel. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 This will work if you resize the Canvas. Go to View > Guides Set it up like this. This will give you a grid within the Margins. You may need to set the Margins to 0 (zero) while using this. firstdefence and NotMyFault 2 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 15, 2023 Author Share Posted January 15, 2023 4 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: This will work if you resize the Canvas. Go to View > Guides Set it up like this. This will give you a grid within the Margins. You may need to set the Margins to 0 (zero) while using this. So... "Guides" instead of "Grid"? Confused because I don't want to resize the canvas.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 Just now, jimh12345 said: Confused because I don't want to resize the canvas.... Yet. There may come a time you do want to and this will work. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 15, 2023 Author Share Posted January 15, 2023 Just now, Old Bruce said: Yet. There may come a time you do want to and this will work. Oh you mean the Guides will stay consistent if I resize...? And I should just forget about Grid? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 I am assuming you want the canvas divided into thirds. Or... You could be asking for a Grid that has Major divisions of (let us say) 20mm and then subdivisions of those in thirds. Which is it? If you want the canvas divided then don't worry about the name Grid versus Guide. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 15, 2023 Author Share Posted January 15, 2023 The former. I'll stick with Guide. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueLiner Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 Just as an aside, when you bring up the CROP tool, you can set the overlay to Thirds Grid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 Whoa! Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 Still not getting it. Column guides work, they're a bit weird. But I've found no way to make either "Guides" or "Grid" show up, have toggled all sorts of options. Can't believe it's this difficult to show a basic composition grid in a photo editing program. The thirds grid in in Crop tool is fine, can't I display that somehow when I'm not cropping? Right now I'm using the Perspective tool. I want a grid to help me get things vertical and horizontal. I click "show grid" on the Perspective tool and the resulting grid tilts and skews to track my perspective adjustments - and that's useless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueLiner Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 Try the attached Asset. I will include an SVG as well. Just bring the grid into your already opened photo and place above the photo. Resize then you may want to lock its layer as well. It is a vector so you can increase the stroke thickness and changer its color for better contrast. PhotoGrid.afassets ThirdsGrid.svg RichardMH 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 1 hour ago, jimh12345 said: Column guides work, they're a bit weird. But I've found no way to make either "Guides" or "Grid" show up, have toggled all sorts of options. Select the item View > Guides... to bring up the Guides dialog. Enable View > Show Column Guides. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardMH Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 Rule of thirds grid is also in the crop tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 Column guides, I get. Those work ok. The grid in the crop tool is fine, but confined to that tool. The other "guides" and "grid" are what have baffled me so far. Just ranting I guess, seems a bit complicated for a photo editing application. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debraspicher Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 11 minutes ago, jimh12345 said: Column guides, I get. Those work ok. The grid in the crop tool is fine, but confined to that tool. The other "guides" and "grid" are what have baffled me so far. Just ranting I guess, seems a bit complicated for a photo editing application. The Automatic grid changed in V2 to be a pixel grid, so if you zoom further in past 100% (I forget at what level off-hand) you will begin to see the grid. This is why you are not seeing anything. You can press Ctrl + ' to show/hide and you should see what I mean. I don't know why they changed it. It's not a big deal for me, in particular. I rather prefer to customize my grids and I'm quite obsessed with document setup/organization being just so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 @debrapicher, thanks for that clarification. Really, I'm ok with "Column Guides". Obviously AP is a lot more than just a "photo editor", it's part of the whole document thing, and for an ordinary photographer like me it's considerably over-featured. So be it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 4 hours ago, debraspicher said: The Automatic grid changed in V2 to be a pixel grid, so if you zoom further in past 100% (I forget at what level off-hand) you will begin to see the grid. This is why you are not seeing anything. You can press Ctrl + ' to show/hide and you should see what I mean. I don't know why they changed it I think in V2 the Automatic Grid setting is broken, at least compared to the way it works in V1, because in V2 it is always a 1X1 px grid & thus hidden unless you zoom in far enough to see each individual pixel because otherwise all you would see is a solid mesh of the grid lines. In V1, it automatically adjusts the grid size as you zoom in & out so at low zoom levels it uses a larger spacing & at higher levels a finer spacing. Regardless, I think the only useful way for it to work is like it did in V1. RichardMH 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan C Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 11 hours ago, R C-R said: I think in V2 the Automatic Grid setting is broken, at least compared to the way it works in V1, because in V2 it is always a 1X1 px grid & thus hidden unless you zoom in far enough to see each individual pixel because otherwise all you would see is a solid mesh of the grid lines. In V1, it automatically adjusts the grid size as you zoom in & out so at low zoom levels it uses a larger spacing & at higher levels a finer spacing. I can confirm this was a deliberate change made by our devs in V2 for the 'Automatic' grid setting - however I have logged with them to return the V1 behaviour, as not only does it cause confusion when users cannot see the pixel grid, it is also less helpful overall IMO. PaulEC, Old Bruce, loukash and 6 others 6 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh12345 Posted January 18, 2023 Author Share Posted January 18, 2023 No doubt there will be more like me - coming from other photo editing programs that have an obvious and conventional "Grid" function, and expect AP's "grid" to be similar. And it looks like in AP, photographers probably want "Column Guides" instead. So making the "Grid" immediately visible does run the risk of getting photographers to start using a pixel grid, which they probably don't want. It's a can't-win situation, I get it - you don't want to change the terminology now. I'm just making the point that photographer using less complex tools in the past may have some initial confusion in AP. So be it. It's a fantastic power tool, with a significant learning curve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Mo Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 On 1/18/2023 at 5:22 AM, Dan C said: I can confirm this was a deliberate change made by our devs in V2 for the 'Automatic' grid setting - however I have logged with them to return the V1 behaviour, as not only does it cause confusion when users cannot see the pixel grid, it is also less helpful overall IMO. Any view as to when this fix will be in place? Having to reset this for EVERY photo (i.e. every few minutes) makes me want to go back to Photo1. THanks for the visibility of the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan C Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 Our developers have confirmed that the current behavior has been set to match Photoshop, and "automatic" is unlikely to be changed at this time. They have however said we're looking at ways that customers could be able to make a grid setting that does act in the way was as V1's automatic option, and I will be sure to request a 'default' setting for this grid type, such that enabling the Grid in a new document would use this option, akin to V1, rather than the current V2 'auto-grid' behaviour. I'm sorry I don't have a more positive answer currently. Andy Mo and R C-R 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 Thanks, @DanC. But please also consider a V1-like default setting that will work on image files (JPG, etc.) that are Opened, not just when creating a new document. Andy Mo and Dan C 2 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.7, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 18 minutes ago, Dan C said: Our developers have confirmed that the current behavior has been set to match Photoshop, and "automatic" is unlikely to be changed at this time. Why on earth would they want to copy something from Photoshop that is less useful than the way it worked in V1? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Mo Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 1 hour ago, Dan C said: Our developers have confirmed that the current behavior has been set to match Photoshop, and "automatic" is unlikely to be changed at this time. As a user of Photoshop for over 10 years (admittedly never above CS3), my experience is that PS showed you a usable grid that you could see and did not need to be re-configured with every photo I open. It also did not default to something as useless as drawing a border around every square pixel. RichardMH 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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