While Photoshop keeps its guides stubbornly monochrome, Illustrator offers more flexibility. By default, guides in Illustrator inherit the color of the layer they reside on when selected. This behavior provides a quick visual cue for identifying which layer a guide belongs to, especially useful in complex projects with multiple layers.
To leverage this feature effectively, you might need to adjust your workflow. For example, consider using more layers than you typically would. Placing guides on separate layers allows you to quickly distinguish them by their color simply by selecting them with the marquee tool. While working with numerous guides on a crowded artboard requires extra caution to avoid accidental movement, the benefits of clear visual organization often outweigh this drawback. Encourage the use of layers; it’s a good and heavily neglected practice in Illustrator.
An alternative method offers even greater control over guide colors. This involves creating a dedicated, non-printing guide layer at the top of your layer stack. Instead of using the standard guide tool, draw thin strokes (e.g., 0.25 pt) directly on this layer, assigning each stroke the color you desire. Lock the layer and reduce its opacity (e.g., to 80%) to ensure the lines are visible but don’t interfere with your artwork. You can easily toggle the layer’s visibility to hide or show the guides as needed.
This approach has the added advantage of enabling the creation of guides at arbitrary angles or in custom shapes, which goes beyond the limitations of standard Illustrator guides. This method provides a closer analogy to traditional drawing-tablet workflows, offering a more hands-on approach to guiding your artwork. It might take a little getting used to at first, but you may find that it is easier than using the default guides after you have tried it.
Whether you prefer the layer-based color inheritance or the custom-colored stroke method, Illustrator offers multiple ways to effectively manage and visually differentiate your guides.
