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Adobe InDesign’s keyboard shortcut to create crosshair Guides (a vertical and horizontal guide) is so obvious that it’s easy to miss.
Don't waste time dragging a horizontal & vertical guide out separately...
Adobe InDesign’s crosshair Guides creation shortcut
Adobe InDesign’s crosshair Guides creation shortcut
Easily create guides at any angle in Adobe Illustrator
Easily create guides at any angle in Adobe Illustrator
Most people are aware that you can pull a horizontal or vertical guide out of the document ruler in Adobe Illustrator. But I suspect many users are unaware that you can then rotate that guide to any angle you wish.
Drag a guide out from the ruler. Now make sure your guides aren’t locked by unticking Lock Guides in the View>Guides menu. Select the guide (you can click and drag over the guide to easily select it) so it is active. Now select the Rotate tool (or simply hit the R key) and rotate the guide to your desired angle. Once you’re finished, you can re-lock the guide to keep from accidentally moving it.
Creating precision guides in Photoshop with the GuideGuide panel
Creating precision guides in Photoshop with the GuideGuide panel
Before you ask, the answer is no, there is no error in the headline. The name of the Adobe Photoshop Panel add-on is GuideGuide. It has a silly name, but it’s one of the more useful add-ons I’ve seen in quite a while, and it’s absolutely free.
GuideGuide Photoshop Panel makes creating precision guides simple
GuideGuide is a custom Panel you add to Photoshop which makes creating precision guides as simple as entering some numbers and clicking an icon. Rather than go into loads of detail, I encourage you to check out the GuideGuide page Cameron McEfee has put up for sharing his creation. If you’re a web designer creating comps, or a graphic designer looking for precision column guides, this Panel is going to make your life MUCH easier!
Temporarily turn off InDesign’s Snap feature
Temporarily turn off InDesign’s Snap feature
If you happen to have a lot of objects in a relatively small area and are trying to drag and drop an object in a specific location, it can be difficult to do so due to Adobe InDesign’s Snap To feature. You object may try to snap to other objects on the page, or even guides.
You can avoid this headache by turning off the Snap To feature temporarily by press and holding the Control key as you drop your object into place.
Working with Photoshop Guides
Working with Photoshop Guides
Guides can be really helpful when composing your artwork in Photoshop. Many users often find themselves tediously trying to place a guide at the exact center of a Photoshop document by dragging the guide out of the ruler. Even holding the Shift key down to have the guides snap to the tick marks on the ruler, it can be a pain. There’s an easier way to do it. 
Go to View>New Guide and choose either a horizontal or vertical Orientation by checking the radio buttons. Then type 50% in the position box. Repeat the process for the other Orientation. You’ll now have guides at the exact horizontal and vertical in your document. Now that you’ve created your guides, you want them to stay centered. But if your guides are locked into place and you crop or otherwise resize your image, the guides remain wherever they are, including off the image completely depending on where they are located. To have them remain at the 50% mark no matter how you crop or resize, simply unlock your guides by hitting Command + Option + ; (or visit the View menu and unlock them manually). Alternatively, if you really want the guides to stay in place, lock the guides before your crop or resize. So that vertical guide you placed at the one inch mark will remain there after you resize your image (unless of course you resize your image to smaller than one inch).
Select & delete all guides at once in Adobe InDesign
Select & delete all guides at once in Adobe InDesign
If you’ve ever received an Adobe InDesign file from another designer or client that you need to work on, and upon opening found the document pages absolutely covered with useless Guides (Don’t you just hate that?), this little tip will ease your pain, and clear the document of unsightly and largely unnecessary guides. Rather than deleting guides one at a time, hit Command + Option + G then Delete. This selects all the guides on the page and deletes them. If you find the guides locked into position, hit Command + Option + ; to unlock them before selecting and deleting them.
Select and distribute guides easily in Adobe InDesign
Select and distribute guides easily in Adobe InDesign
My friends over at CreativeTechs have a great tip to help you evenly distribute guides across your page in Adobe InDesign. You could do it the hard way, using measurements and a steady hand, or the easy way as follows:
- Set your first and last guide where you want them, then drag more guides out until you have as many as you need. You don’t need to worry about where they are, as long as they’re between the first and last.
- Now drag the Selection tool (solid arrow) across all the guides so they’re selected (make sure you only have guides selected).
- Now click on either the vertical or horizontal Distribute icon in the Control panel at the top of the screen. Your guides will automatically be evenly distributed between the first and last guides you set.
If you need more help, I recommend you click the link above because CreativeTechs has a great animation of the process.
Set vertical & horizontal guides at one time in Adobe InDesign
Set vertical & horizontal guides at one time in Adobe InDesign
If you want to set a vertical and horizontal guide along the edges of an object in Adobe InDesign, you normally find yourself dragging a guide out from the horizontal ruler, then another from the vertical ruler. Did you know you can save time by setting both guides at once? Let’s say your want to set guides, as I have in the image above, across the top and down the left side of a placed image. Hold down the Command key and click in the crosshairs icon where the two rulers meet at the top of your document. Drag out the dual guides to the top left of your image while still holding the Command key down, and release when they’re right where you want them. As you can see in the animated image above, the guides both appear right where I dragged them and I’ve saved myself another trip to the rulers!