XY coordinants in Cs2

Hi , i`ve just recently purchased Cs2 recently and trying to learn .I`ve alrady spent some time learning GIMP and anmother freebie paint program ,, paint .net One thing i cant find that i have in one of my other paint programs is xy coordinants pertaining to where my cursor is in the layer i`m in . This would make it so much easier and more accurate for me to place certain features in a texture . Got to be a totally newb question but i`ve searched everywhere to try to findout how to enable this in Cs2 . Btw ,, thankyou sooooo much for all the help posted here by all of the more seasoned PS folks. ) You`ve saved me countless hours and i do apprieciate your willingness to share your knowledge .
Thankyou so much , dani

One thing you can do is turn on Rulers. Hit Ctrl + r and you should see the gutters along the top and on the left. If you right-click in either gutter, you can set the units.

Another thing you can use is the Info palette. View > Info, I believe. Or something like that. I don't use Info palette much because it bogs me down something fierce. I only whip it out when absolutely needed.

Abu, that's odd that the Info Palette slows your machine down. I've never heard of that before. All it does is display information that Photoshop has to be tracking all the time anyway in order just to function, so it's really strange that showing that palette or not would have any effect at all. Gotta love computers.

Anyway, Daniel, assuming you don't have the same problem as Abu with the Info Palette, you'll find it's very useful. I use it all the time. It shows in real time the current coordinates of your mouse, and the exact RGB & CMYK values for the color of whatever pixel it's currently on. It also shows the size of any selections you make, and it gives a description of whatever tool you're currently using, complete with a listing of what buttons to press for the tool's options.

If you're using the default workspace layout, you'll find the Info Palette tab directly to the right of the Navigator tab, near the top right corner of the screen.

You'll also find the rulers are very useful. I never work without them. To turn them on, press Ctrl-R, as Abu said, or go View -> Rulers. Right click on either ruler to change the units. For SL work, I recommend using pixels for your units. For print work, you might want to change it to a general unit like inches or centimeters, or a more print-specific unit like points or picas.

Left clicking and dragging from either ruler will allow you to place a guide on your image. Guides are straight lines that appear in the GUI, but not in the image itself. They're very useful for aligning things. You can snap to them, or not, as you work to keep things as well aligned and straight as you want. You can turn the display of your guides on or off at any time by going View -> Show -> Guides, or by using the shortcut Ctrl-; . To erase a guide, simply drag it back to the ruler (via the Move Tool). To erase all guides at once, go View -> Clear Guides. To place a guide in an exact position, either drag it while looking at the Info Palette, or go View -> New Guide and then type the coordinates where you want it to be. To protect your guides from accidental movement, go View -> Lock Guides.

One other handy reference is the grid. To turn it on and off, go View -> Show -> Grid, or use the shortcut Ctrl-' . You can change the size and display options for the grid at any time via the preferences dialog (Edit -> Preferences -> Guides, Grid, & Slices). With the grid, as with guides, you can choose to snap to it or not as you work so you can be as precise as you want.

To turn snapping on or off, go View -> Snap, or use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-; . To turn it on or off for a specific element, go View -> Snap To, and then choose the specific item from the list.

Daniel, just to add to what Chosen has said, the other thing I use a lot are Smart Guides. Those are guide lines that appear when you are lined up with other things in the image. If you are positioning a lot of elements, they can make it much easier to align them.

Also, for alignment, don't overlook the automatic alignment possibilities. If you shift click, you can select more than one layer in PS CS2. When you do that, and choose the Move tool (V) you will see some choices in the Options bar that allow you to Align or Distribute the stuff on those layers. Very handy!

Hope this helps

Yeaaaaaa ,, i got numbers to go by now !!! Thankyou all so much . A great help .
Super dooper fragilistic xpalidousous !
Dani