Actions to subdivide an image

[PeterAit]

I have Paul Jareszewski's Photoshop actions for creating triptychs, they are very useful. But now I need to divide images differently, into a 2 x 2 or a 3 x 2 grid. Any suggestions as to where to find such a tool?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I have Paul Jareszewski's Photoshop actions for creating triptychs, they are very useful. But now I need to divide images differently, into a 2 x 2 or a 3 x 2 grid. Any suggestions as to where to find such a tool?

Hi Peter,

Could you elaborate, as to what is exactly the goal. Just divide an image into sub-tiles, edge-to-edge, overlap, borders, etc, or combine multiple separate images in a grid layout and make one large file, or ...?

Cheers,
Bart

[Wayne Fox]

are you needing to do this to many images, thus the action?

If not, my method is to change the image size to the number of inches as the number of divisions I want with resampling turned off.  Then drag a guide to each of the inch marks (I zoom in far enough it’s easy to tell when they are perfect).  Then with snapping on  select each of the sections and copy/new/paste into a new document for each section.  Then I just go back in the history panel to where I made the original resize (or choose image size and set it back to what it was.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

If not, my method is to change the image size to the number of inches as the number of divisions I want with resampling turned off.  Then drag a guide to each of the inch marks (I zoom in far enough it’s easy to tell when they are perfect).

Hi Wayne,

I just enter a percentage in the View>New Guide... menu dialog box, e.g. 33.33%, 66.66% for placing a guide.

Cheers,
Bart

[PeterAit]

Thanks, Bart and Wayne. Your methods sound good and I'll give it a try. I mainly wanted an action due to laziness!

[louoates]

Hi Wayne,

I just enter a percentage in the View>New Guide... menu dialog box, e.g. 33.33%, 66.66% for placing a guide.

Cheers,
Bart

Great tip! And I thought I knew EVERYTHING in Photoshop.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Great tip! And I thought I knew EVERYTHING in Photoshop.

One cannot know what one doesn't know.
I'm pretty sure though that there is (a lot?) that I do not know yet either.

Sharing tips does help.

Cheers,
Bart

[Wayne Fox]

Hi Wayne,

I just enter a percentage in the View>New Guide... menu dialog box, e.g. 33.33%, 66.66% for placing a guide.

Cheers,
Bart

very nice.  didn’t even know you could enter a % there ...

[Colorwave]

Guides got a lot more powerful in CC 2014, but I still can't live without GuideGuide.  It was recently upgraded to run in HTML5, so it now works in CC2014.  It's free, too.

You can create complex guide layouts, including image wraps, if you are tiling an image for spanning multiple gallery wraps, and you can also save your sets for later use.

http://guideguide.me

[Wayne Fox]

Hi Wayne,

I just enter a percentage in the View>New Guide... menu dialog box, e.g. 33.33%, 66.66% for placing a guide.

Cheers,
Bart

while very cool and helpful, nfortunately it doesn’t work in an action.  it appears photoshop uses the % to calculate a dimension then places the guide, but then stores the resulting dimension in the action, not the percentage.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

while very cool and helpful, unfortunately it doesn’t work in an action.  it appears photoshop uses the % to calculate a dimension then places the guide, but then stores the resulting dimension in the action, not the percentage.

That's a bummer, and kind of a stupid limitation. As a kludge one could perhaps allow user interaction at that point of the script, perhaps preceded by a small pop-up message as to the required percentage at that point in the action. And actions can also call other actions so it could be made flexible without repeating the same instructions for each layout.

Cheers,
Bart