Add Visual Interest To Your Photos With The Rule Of Thirds
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We've created a new 4x6 Photoshop document. We've dragged our original photo into this new document. We've added two horizontal and two vertical guides to create our rule of thirds grid and saved the process as an action. All that's left to do now is move the subject of the photo into one of the four intersecting grid points.
After careful consideration, I've decided that my photo would look best with the butterfly positioned in or close to the top right intersection point, shown below circled in red:
I'm going to move it into place and shrink the photo down in size at the same time using Photoshop's "Free Transform" option.
Step 9: Select The 'Free Transform' Option
Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to quickly bring up the Free Transform box and handles around your image. When you do that, if it looks like nothing has happened, it's because your photo is larger than the document you've dragged it into and the sides of the image are extending out beyond the document window where you can't see them. We'll fix that problem in the next step.
Step 10: Press 'Ctrl+0' (Win) / 'Command+0' (Mac) To Fit Everything On Screen
Press Ctrl+0 (Win) / Command+0 (Mac) to fit your entire photo, including everything that's extending out beyond the boundaries of the document window, onto the screen, at which point the Free Transform box and handles will also be visible. I've circled the Free Transform handles in red below, since they're a bit hard to see in the screenshot:
Step 11: Move The Subject Of The Photo Into Position
With my Free Transform box around my image, the first thing I'm going to do is move the subject of my photo, the butterfly, into place. I want him (or her) to appear somewhere in that top right grid intersection point, so I'm going to click anywhere inside my photo and drag the butterfly into position. I think the spot where its front legs and body meet works nicely:
Step 12: Drag The Center Anchor Point Of The Free Transform Box To The Grid Point
My subject is in place, but there's still quite a bit of the original photo that's still extending out of view, and I want to keep as much of it as I can in this new version of the image, so I'm going to drag the corner handles of the Free Transform box inward to fit more of the photo into the visible document area. Problem is, as I drag the handles inward, my butterfly is going to keep moving out of position on me, and I've already got it where I want it. Fortunately, I can avoid that problem by first moving the center anchor point of the Free Transform box to that top right grid point. That way, my butterfly will stay in place as I'm dragging.
You'll find the center anchor point, yep, you guessed it, in the center of the Free Transform box (circled in red below):
To move it, simply click it and drag it to a new location. I'm going to drag it to that top right grid point:
Step 13: Drag The Free Transform Handles Inward To Fit More Of The Original Photo Into The Image
Now that the center anchor point has been moved into place, it's time to finish things off by dragging any one of the Free Transform corner handle points inward, shrinking the size of the original photo thereby allowing more of it to fit into the new Rule of Thirds version of the image.
As you drag any of the corner handles inward, hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) as you drag. The Shift key will constrain the proportions of the image, and the Alt or Option key will cause the image to shrink inward from the location of that center anchor point, which is exactly what we want. I'm going to hold down Shift+Alt, since I'm using a PC here, and I'll drag the bottom left corner point inward to fit as much of my original photo into my new 4x6 image as I can:
Press Enter or Return to apply the transformation.
Step 14: Hide The Guides And You're Done!
Press Ctrl+; (Win) / Command+; (Mac) to hide the guides we created, and remember that the next time you need to create that 3x3 Rule of Thirds grid, you have that action ready to go!
Once you've hidden the guides, that's it! You're done! Here's my original "sniper rifle" image for the sake of comparison:
And here's my more interesting looking "Rule of Thirds" 4x6 version, a subtle yet definite improvement:
And there we have it! Even if you're not a professional photographer and the only time you snap photos is on family vacations, you can use Photoshop and the Rule of Thirds design trick to easily make ordinary photos seem a little more extraordinary.
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