What the heck is a ROT Grid? Well, serious photographers know all about the "Rule of Thirds," or ROT. Here's the Wikipedia reference for the Rule of Thirds. If you want to get serious about taking better pictures, you can find more information by Googling, "Photography Rule of Thirds," and read some of the tutorials.
The Rule of Thirds is sort of like the sweetspot on a tennis racket.
There are a lot of versions of Photoshop, both PC and Mac, but I think that this should work the same on most of them. In the Photoshop Edit Menu, pull it down to Preferences, than Guides, Grid & Slices. It should open a dialog box like the one below.
Under the Grid section pick a color for the grid, select lines and place 33.3 and percent in the Gridline every: section. You will now see a grid on the picture that makes it easy to visualize your picture overlayed with a rule of thirds grid.
If you don't want to see the grid on top of the picture use the keyboard shortcut, Control and Apostrophe or Command and Apostrophe for MAC's. This command toggles the grid on and off the screen.
When you have the picture on the screen, unlock the layer, move it into the correct rule of thirds placement and crop.
The emphasis I wanted on this picture was the bee, that's why I placed it directly on a rule of third gridline. If I wanted the emphasis on the flower instead I would have cropped the picture differently.
Richard Iarossi, REALTOR®
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Rich Iarossi is a full time licensed REALTOR®, working in Crofton, MD. My coverage areas are: Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, Howard, Calvert, Queen Anne, and Baltimore City and County. I specialize in residential real estate, working with both buyers and sellers. Use the registration free search on my website at www.RichSellsHomes.com. If you’re not already working with a REALTOR®...I can help. Call me at 443-995-9595 (Cell) or 410-451-6255 (Office).
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Rich...
For some reason everyone has photos on their minds today, but this is great information and a nice shot of a bumblebee on a coneflower!
Richard,
Thanks. Photoshop defaults with the grid off and it's not intuitive on how to turn it on. Hope you and your's had a great July 4th holiday.
Rich
Rich, That info was stuck somewhere back in the dark recesses of my mind, thank you! Now I am off to see if the program I use has that feature. Thank you!
Rich,
Thank you. I have been aware of and have used the rule of thirds while taking photos. It is good to learn that photoshop has the grids. I am still new to photoshop elements -- but it looks like it is awesome.
Hi Rich:
Great information! I love that photo too...
You must have taken a few, I saw the close-up one of this series the other day!
Richard, I was using an action script for photo placement for the Rule of Thirds. This is a whole lot easier. Thanks for the tip.
I am going to try this out. Thank you for sharing.
I have so much to learn... thanks