What's smarter than using guides - it's Smart Guides!

These little known additions to Photoshop CS2 are there to help you align objects on layers, but they don't show up just on the edges of your object. As you drag your layer, they look for angles and corners within your layer, and the guides then extend out from there - that's why they're called "Smart."

To turn them on within your multi-layered file, go to the View menu and under Show choose Smart Guides. Once they're enabled, the purple or violet lines appear automatically whenever you drag one layer with a rectangular selection and there’s a square edge or corner on another layer.

This is especially useful for makers of AV’s where you want two on-end shots to appear beside each other over a horizontal background image. Once you’ve got the two selections lined up using Smart Guides it’s time to hold down Control and press the X key to make the selected areas transparent.

If required go to Select - Reselect and then Edit -> Stroke and put a line around the edges of the transparent windows, but make sure you choose Outside and not Inside, otherwise they won’t show. Strokes are always best put onto a new layer as you can add a Drop Shadow yet still revert back to your original background image without having bits of frames and shadows lying around.

Keith Robins