Rulers, guides and smart guides in Layout by Zaweba

Rulers and guides are what make a page look designed rather than arranged. Layout by Zaweba gives you rulers in your choice of unit, guides you can place by hand or build into a grid, and smart guides that help line things up as you drag. Used together they mean things line up because you planned it, not because you squinted.

Rulers and units

Rulers can show millimetres, centimetres, inches, points, picas or pixels, and the units are set per document. A book printed in the UK might be measured in millimetres, while a typesetter may prefer points and picas for text, and a screen piece makes more sense in pixels. Because units belong to the document, a job keeps its own units when you open it next to one that uses different ones.

The ruler origin, the zero point, can be moved. Moving it to the corner of a picture or the edge of a margin lets you measure from there directly, which is handy when placing a run of frames at set distances from something other than the page corner.

Guides by hand and by grid

You can place individual guides wherever you need them. Create guides goes further: it makes rows and columns with a gutter between them, fitted either to the page or to the margins. For a catalogue with a regular grid of products, that gives you a ready made structure to snap pictures and captions to.

Column guides follow the columns set for the page. The baseline grid gives lines of text a common rhythm, so text in neighbouring columns sits on the same lines. A document grid gives a general purpose grid over the whole page. Guide colours can be changed so different kinds of guide are easy to tell apart, and guides can be locked so you don't drag one by accident while moving frames.

Guides can also live on parent pages. Put the grid there once and every page based on that parent has it, which keeps a whole magazine consistent.

Smart guides

Smart guides appear as you drag. They align to other frames' edges and centres, show when the spacing between frames is equal, and show dimensions. Drag a third picture next to two others and a smart guide tells you when the gap matches; drag a frame near the centre of another and it snaps into line.

They're best for quick, relative alignment. For a strict grid, use Create guides and let the frames snap to those.

Guide mistakes that make pages look loose

The commonest is ignoring guides once they're there, placing frames by eye a fraction away from the line. Zoom in and check, or use the Control bar to type exact positions.

Another is building guides page by page when they should be on the parent. If every spread needs the same grid, set it once on the parent page.

A third is leaving guides unlocked during heavy editing. Dragging a frame and catching a guide instead is a small annoyance repeated many times; lock guides while you work and release them only when the grid itself needs to change.

Finally, check the ruler origin when measurements look odd. If it was moved for one job and not put back, numbers will be measured from the wrong place.

Rulers, guides and smart guides are among the least glamorous tools in Layout by Zaweba, and among the ones that most improve the look of a finished page.