Photoshop CS4 has a great new feature called the Pixel Grid. The pixel grid appears when you zoom past 500% and can help with editing at the pixel level.
You can control whether this grid is displayed or not using the View > Show > Pixel Grid menu option.
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If you don’t see the pixel grid menu option, then you most likely haven’t got OpenGL enabled in your Photoshop preferences. To fix this, select the Edit > Preferences > Performance… menu option. Make sure that Enable OpenGL Drawing is checked.

I personally find the Pixel Grid really useful. Do you? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear.

Duane Falconer
Thanx Antony!
Great tip….
Anthony Hortin
Thanks Duane
Kox
Please help! I have CS4 and i want to have only grid, but not pixel grid and i can’t turn it off. It’s not checked View > Show > Pixel Grid. I even try to disable OpenGL so there’s no Pixel Grid in View > Show but it’s still there when i turn grid on and no, i’m not in 500% zoom. Any clue? Thx
Anthony Hortin
Hi Kox, If there’s a grid displaying and you haven’t got the “Pixel Grid” option checked (within the View > Show > Pixel Grid menu option) then it’s most likely another grid that’s showing. Also, the Pixel Grid will only display after zooming in more than 500%. Check whether the View > Show > Grid option is checked. This will make a grid display whenever you’ve got it checked, no matter whether you’re zoomed in or not.
John Stanowski
But can we snap to this Pixel Grid? I don’t see options for it anywhere. When designing a website I might transform a Vector Mask and I see that it’s possible to leave it in between pixel grid lines giving it a sub-pixel width. Know what I mean?
Anthony Hortin
Hi John,
You can’t snap to the Pixel Grid but what you could do is turn on ‘Snap To Grid’ (View > Snap To > Grid menu option). Then, set up your grid preferences (Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices… menu option) so that the Gridline is displayed every 1px (& 1 subdivision). You can then simply use the keyboard shortcut key to display/hide the grid as required. Hope this helps
mccanute
Ha! So long, pesky pixel grid!
Thanks, Anthony. And you were right about the 10 seconds, too.
mccanute
I know it’s a big date, but haven’t you jumped the gun (or the fireworks) a bit? As of right now I cannot find any calendar that will agree to more than 3 July…
Anthony Hortin
Glad you found the tip useful. Thanks for leaving a comment. I’m over in Australia and so is the server where this site is hosted, which is why it’s already July 4