Expert: Glen Demers - 8/20/2010

Question
Hi Glen,

Thanks for the info you sent me on the circle I will try it out and if I need any help or if I am having any trouble I will contact you again on it. But, for now, I forgot to ask you this when I asked you about the circle, but I figure I wait and ask you later, but I am a bit curious to know how to do this I would like to know how you would center an object in an image, like for example a circle and or square and or even an image itself what ever the image is. I think it would be that you would move an object of what ever it is and use the Ctrl or Alt key to drop the object where ever you want it and it is aligned center, or what? For example like the Pepsi emblem that I asked about that I was trying to create a circle half red and the other blue and thank you for the info on this if you remember me asking and telling you about this, well this is a new e-mail so I will not go into any further details that I want I got them thanks to you. Again thank you Glen.

But what I am asking now for example the Pepsi logo again how would you align and center the word for example Pepsi inside the white center of the red and blue circle I know I can not do this I mean create one or it because it was already create, well at least something like this aligning and centering an object in an image of any kind no matter what it is, also like in a circle and or square. This was only an example of what I am asking you. Thank you again, Glen. And like I said I will contact you again for more further assistance if I need any, you have been very helpful. Thanks once again, Glen.

Sincerely yours,

Martin C. Meyer

Answer
Hi Martin,

You use the move tool to align objects on their vertical or horizontal centers. To align objects in the center of the document select the background layer and in the layers palette click on the link box next to the layers you want centered and click on the align vertical center icon. Since the background is selected, everything will be aligned to the center of the background, which is the center of the document. If you link layers without selecting the background, the align vertical centers tool will align the objects relative to each other and not necessarily in the center of the document.

Make sure you unlink the layers before attempting to move items on individual layers.

To manually position objects make sure snap is checked under the View menu and check snap to all. When you are drawing or moving objects and they get near a guide or gridline, if you have grid turned on View>Show>Grid, the edge of the object will snap to the nearest line when it gets close.

For quick and dirty centering, I'll drag out two guides that mark the vertical and horizontal center of my document and when I use the move tool check show bounding box. This will put "handles" on objects when you move them and I visually align the center handles with my guides.

For text you can just make the text box the same width as you document and choose center text on the paragraph palette. The cursor will move to the center of the text box when you click on the center text icon.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

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