This week it’s going to be a really quick look at alignment tools in Photoshop.

These have been around for a long time, definitely back to CS2 and probably before but I only started using Photoshop when Creative Suite 2 came out so I don’t know for sure.

Before coming across the alignment tools getting the exact center of a design, or equally distancing objects in a design, was a bit of a mission so I felt a bit silly when I came across the tools that do it instantly for you.

It comes in handy here to start with a document that has a background to align to but if you don’t already have one and you want to align the entire design then just create a new layer Ctrl (Cmd) + Shift + N in Photoshop, Select All Ctrl (Cmd) + A and Fill it Ctrl (Cmd) + Backspace.

Select the layers you want to align, you can select more than one layer by Ctrl (Cmd) Clicking on multiple layers. Now make sure you have the Move tool (V) active.

This is the Alignment palette that appears at the top of the Photoshop window underneath the Menu bar. The buttons we’re concerned with are the 6 on the left that are highlighted.

The 3 on the left are vertical alignment, align top edges, align vertical centers and align bottom edges respectively. The other 3 are horizontal alignment and just like the symbols imply they’re for align left, center and right edges respectively. Now if we want to align the center then we need to click the 2nd and 5th buttons for layers’ true center.

Now I won’t patronise you, I’m sure you can figure out what the rest of the highlighted buttons do. Remember you must always have at least two layers selected.

Grouped Alignment

What happens if you want to center numerous layers as a whole without changing their relative positions? Well in this case it’s simplest to select the layers you want to keep together and Group them Ctrl (Cmd) + G then select the group and the Background layer and center them that way.

Layer Distribution

Let’s say you have three layers that you want to evenly space, this is where Distribution comes in, these are the buttons just to the right of the Alignment symbols.

The highlighted button are for distributing layers and the symbols are pretty self-​​explanatory, they distribute the top, center and bottom edges vertically and the left, center and right edges horizontally. In the case of simple boxes you need only push the 2nd and 5th buttons for central distribution.

For the distribution to work you need at least three layers selected and have placed the layers on the either side to be where you want them to be.

What I mean by this can be shown in this example. Above are 3 unevenly spaced boxes, when distributed the boxes on the left and right won’t move, these are the extremities of the distribution and Photoshop presumes you have put them where you want them to be.

Now to get here I’ve distributed the boxes vertically and horizontally using the 2nd and 5th buttons and then grouped them and aligned them to the center vertically and horizontally.

Auto-Alignment

The final button I won’t go into in much depth but simply it can be used to get Photoshop to automatically align images and photographs that share common objects and correct any distortions and vignettes, it’s a pretty useful tool, especially if you File > Automate > Photomerge because then Photoshop can blend them together as well creating a seamless image.

That’s all folks.