Today’s Question: Somehow I’ve accidently activated a ‘Grid’ that is overlaying every image that I open in Photoshop. I have gone into ‘View’ but the ‘Clear Guides’ command is not active (greyed out).
Tim’s Quick Answer: In this case it sounds like it is actually the Grid display option that is an issue, not the Guides. So all you need to do is choose View > Show > Grid from the menu to disable the Grid display.
More Detail: Photoshop provides you with a variety of non-printing display options, primarily aimed at helping you align various objects within a document. Of course, when you enable one of these options by mistake it can become a bit distracting.
For example, one of the other grid options is the Pixel Grid, which can also be found on the View > Show submenu. You’ll find other options as well, some of which you may find helpful from time to time.
There is also an “Extras” option on the View menu, which you can think of as something of a “master switch” for the various display options found on the View > Show submenu. In other words, if you like to enable some of the options found under the View > Show menu, you can temporarily disable (or re-enable) all of them by choosing View > Extras from the menu.
It is worth noting that these various display options can be toggled on or off. When an option is enabled, you will see a checkmark icon next to the name of that option on the menu. When an option is disabled you will not see that checkmark.
Also note that some of these view options have keyboard shortcuts associated with them, which you can see to the right of the applicable options on the menu. Those keyboard shortcuts provide an additional option for quickly enabling or disabling specific options. I suspect that in most cases when one of these options is activated by accident, it happens by pressing a keyboard shortcut unintentionally.