Creating a perspective grid in photoshop
If you want to draw in perspective in photoshop you need to draw perspective grid lines to establish your view. You can draw your own lines sure, but what if you want to tweak the view after you’r done drawing all those lines? Then you have to start all over.. what a drag!
Let’s make that process a little bit easier until the day photoshop gets some proper perspective tools built in (No, vanishing point isn’t an option.)
First create a new document. Depending on what format you work in the dimensions will vary for you but let’s start out with 100×100 pixels, background should be set to white.
Now go to stroke and select black for the stroke color.
Now we got a white square stroked with black at the edges. Hit control+a to select all and then go to Edit/Define Pattern and OK after giving your pattern a name, go with “100×100 grid” or something like that so it’s easy to locate if you create other sizes for larger or smaller documents.
Now create a new layer and hit D to reset your colors. Select the paint bucket tool and set the options drop down that by default will say “Foreground” and set it to pattern. Select the pattern you just create and click on the layer.
Voila, there’s a grid. It’s not in perspective yet though. Hit control+t and select distort by context clicking inside the transformation rectangle, yes… distort, perspective won’t work.
Now drag the corners handles and watch as your flat grid becomes a perspective grid. You can drag the corners around or the middle handles and model the grid into any perspective you need.
Here’s an example:
