February 18, 2002

Photoshop shortcuts and tips

Middle of last year I summarised a bunch of Photoshop shortcuts and other tips for a friend. A thread on web-graphics prompted me to put them online.

I have since used Photoshop 6 and many of these shortcuts have changed. I'll update this list when I switch over to Photoshop 6 full-time. Let me also caveat this by stating that most of these will be insultingly obvious to most seasoned Photoshop users; I created this list to help new users and others who have yet to learn them. (That said, I know many designers who've used Photoshop for years and don’t know half of these shortcuts.)

Shortcuts: learn as many as you can. They speed you up, and keep your focus on the work.

Tool shortcuts (indispensable):

V

moVe

M

Marquee (Shift+M, circular Marquee)

C

Crop

W

Wand

B

Brush

E

Eraser

S

cloning Stamp

N

liNe (Shift+N, penCil = aliased brush)

T

Type

K

fill bucKet

I

Idropper (eyedropper)

G

Gradient fill

Tool shortcuts (slighly less indispensable):

P

Pen

O

Dodge / Burn / Saturate (Shift cycles through)

R

bluR / shaRpen / smeaR (Shift cycles through)

H

Hand

Z

Zoom

Completely indispensable colour shortcuts:

D

Default colours (Foreground/Background to B/W)

X

Xchange (Swap) foreground/background colours)

View mode shortcuts:

Q

Quick mask mode toggle = view selection as rubylith overlay, accepts paint tools

F

Cycles through Normal and 2 full-screen modes — very useful for previewing without clutter

Tab

Removes all palettes (INDISPENSABLE)

Ctrl+;

Show/Hide Guides

Ctrl+'

Show/Hide Grid

Ctrl+R

Show/Hide Rulers

Layer shortcuts: (very useful)

Ctrl+E

Merge Down

Ctrl+J

New Layer from selection by Copy (Duplicate Layer if no selection)

Ctrl+Shift+J

New Layer from selection by Cut

Ctrl+G

Clipping Group with previous layer (Ctrl+Shift+G ungroups)

Selection techniques:

Ctrl+click on layer

loads layer transparency as selection (indispensable)

Ctrl+Shift+I

Invert selection

Selection tool (marquee, wand, lasso) modifiers (with click):

+Shift

Add

+Alt

Subtract

+Shift+Alt

Intersect

…believe me, you use these all the time. Intersect, for example, you use always to refine a previous selection.

Ctrl+Shift+C

Take Merged Copy (very useful: merged of all visible layers)

Ctrl+T

Free Transform (and right-click on the resulting box for more options, incl. Numeric)

Ctrl+Shift+D

Feather selection

Click+drag

[inside selection when selection tool is active] Move selection (or Nudge using arrow keys)

Image adjustments

Ctrl+M

Gamma Curves (Always use this instead of Brightness/Contrast)

Ctrl+L

Levels (Learn to use this)

Ctrl+U

hUe / saturation / lightness

Ctrl+B

colour Balance

Add Alt to any of these to bring back the previously-used values

Paint shortcuts

Alt+Backspace

Fill with foreground colour

Alt+Shift+Backspace

Fill with foreground colour, preserving transparency

Shift+F5

Fill dialog box

[ ]

[Square brackets] Brush size up/down (INDISPENSABLE)

File

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S

Save for Web

Remember:

• ESC aborts all dialog boxes (equiv. to Cancel), also some operations like Crop and Free Transform
• Enter (on numeric keypad) OKs some dialog boxes, notably Type
• Hold Alt down while using any brush tool to get the Eyedropper
• Hold Ctrl down when using any selection tool to get Move tool
• Right-click when using Move tool to get Layer Picker
• Hold Alt down when using the Move tool (by mouse or arrow keys) to Duplicate (otherwise it cuts). When no selection is active, this will duplicate the layer.
• Ctrl-Alt-Z steps back through the History palette. (Effectively, multiple Undo levels)

Actions

• Record your own (remember the Insert Menu Item option in flyout menu)
• All steps can be paused to allow work during action processing
• Assign to F-keys
• Can be used for batch processing

Here are mine:

I can't do without any of these. Download them here: General actions.atn, Filters.atn, Web.atn, Selection.atn

Palettes

Believe it or not, I still try and stick to the 6x6x6 palette. I like to keep this GIF handy:

Here are also two interesting configurations, courtesy of lynda.com. (1).GIF .ACO (2).GIF .ACO

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