How to Clear All Guides Instantly in Image Editing

Working with complex design layouts often results in a canvas cluttered with dozens of alignment guides. Manually dragging each guide back to the ruler is tedious and disrupts your creative workflow. This guide explains how to instantly remove or clear all canvas guides in one action across the most popular image editing software, including Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and Affinity Photo.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop includes a native command dedicated to wiping all guides from your current document at once:

  1. Click on the View menu at the top of your screen.
  2. Navigate to Guides.
  3. Select Clear Guides (or Clear Canvas Guides in newer versions).

Note: In older versions of Photoshop, this option is located directly under View > Clear Guides.

If you only want to hide the guides temporarily without permanently deleting them, press Ctrl + ; (Windows) or Cmd + ; (macOS).

GIMP

GIMP features a straightforward menu command designed specifically for guide management:

  1. Open the Image menu in the top menu bar.
  2. Hover over Guides.
  3. Click Remove all Guides.

All horizontal and vertical guides will immediately disappear from your active canvas.

Affinity Photo

In Affinity Photo, guides are managed through the centralized Guides Manager:

  1. Click on the View menu.
  2. Select Guides Manager... (or Guides... depending on your version).
  3. In the dialog box that appears, you will see lists for horizontal and vertical guide values. Click the Remove All Guides (or trash/clear) button for each axis, or select all entries and press the delete icon.
  4. Click Close.

To quickly toggle guide visibility on and off without removing them, press Ctrl + ; (Windows) or Cmd + ; (macOS).