noob baffled by grid

[jimh12345]

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?  
 

[firstdefence]

Try this...

Notice the Percent checkbox near the bottom on the panel.

[Old Bruce]

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.

[jimh12345]

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....

[Old Bruce]

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.

[jimh12345]

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?

[Old Bruce]

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.

[jimh12345]

The former.    I'll stick with Guide.  Thanks!

[BlueLiner]

Just as an aside, when you bring up the CROP tool, you can set the overlay to Thirds Grid.

[jimh12345]

Whoa! Thanks again.

[jimh12345]

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.   

[BlueLiner]

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

[Old Bruce]

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.

[RichardMH]

Rule of thirds grid is also in the crop tool. 

[jimh12345]

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.  

[debraspicher]

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.

[jimh12345]

@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!   

[R C-R]

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.

[Dan C]

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.

[jimh12345]

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.

[Andy Mo]

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.

[Dan C]

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.

[walt.farrell]

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.

[R C-R]

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?

[Andy Mo]

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.