Add Visual Interest To Your Photos With The Rule Of Thirds
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Before we go any further, let's see exactly what we mean by this Rule of Thirds.
Here's the same photo again, but this time, I've added the grid lines that I've been talking about. They're the horizontal and vertical yellow lines dividing the image up into 3 equally sized rows and columns:
The points where these grid lines intersect have been circled in red. According to the rule of thirds, our image will look more interesting if the subject, which in this case is the butterfly, is positioned at or near one of these points, which at the moment it isn't. We're going to fix that.
As I stated on the previous page, since we're cropping images here, we'll be making smaller versions than the originals, and in this case, I want to turn my photo into a more interesting 4x6. Since I know exactly what size I want my final photo to be, the easiest thing to do is to create a new document at exactly that size. I'll assume from this moment on that you also want a 4x6, but if you're after a different size, any time you see me type "4x6", simply replace it with your own photo dimensions.
Step 1: Create A New 4x6 Document In Photoshop
Since I know I'm going to want a 4x6 when I'm done, I'm going to create a new blank 4x6 document in Photoshop by going up to the File Menu at the top of the screen and choosing New..., which brings up the New Document dialog box.
I want my photo to use landscape orientation, meaning the width is longer than the height, so I'll enter 6 inches for the width and 4 inches for the height. I also want to make sure my photo prints nice and sharp, so I'll enter 300 pixels per inch for the resolution value. I've also named my document "Rule of Thirds 4x6", but you don't have to name yours if you don't want to. When you're done entering the values, click OK and Photoshop will create your new blank document for you.
Step 2: Drag The Photo Into The New Document
Now that I have both my original photo and the new document open on my screen, I'm going to grab my Move tool either from the Tools palette or by pressing "M" on my keyboard, and then I'm going to click anywhere inside my photo and drag it with my mouse into the new document:
And here's what my new document now looks like after I dragged my photo into it. Since my original photo was considerably larger than a 4x6, the sides of the photo extend out beyond the dimensions of the document, but that's fine for now. All we need for the moment is for the photo to be inside the 4x6 document:
I don't need to have my original photo open anymore, and you don't either, so go ahead and close it, leaving only the new document open.
Before we go moving or resizing our photo inside the new document, we need our Rule of Thirds grid lines. Creating the grid lines in Photoshop is incredibly easy, but it's also a little time consuming and even worse, boring, and Easy + Time Consuming + Boring has "Create an action!" written all over it, which is what we're going to do next.
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