Top 10 Favorite Photoshop Shortcuts
Top 10 Favorite Photoshop Shortcuts
Not including the single-key shortcuts for items in the Tools palette, here are the Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts I find most useful. It says “Top Ten” but there’s actually a bunch more that I included in each item, variations of the main one. Did I leave your favorite(s) out of the list? E-mail me and I’ll include them in an upcoming issue.
To keep things simple, I’ll use Mac shortcut keys. If you’re on Windows, just think “Control key” when I say “Command” and “Alt” when I say “Option.”
1. Undo/Redo again and again
Command-Option-Z to step back through time, Command-Shift-Z to step forward after stepping back.
It’s frustrating to me that I can’t just keep pressing Command-Z to undo multiple times as I can in InDesign, but there ya go. Photoshop’s Command-Z only undoes the most recent action. However, Command-Option-Z serves as both a regular Undo as well as an Undo again. My History palette is gathering dust.
2. Cycle through layers
Option-[ selects next layer down, Option-] selects next layer up
Amazing how much time you save groping for the mouse and the Layers palette just knowing these two guys.
In the more recent versions of Photoshop, you can add the Shift key to select multiple layers — Shift-Option-[ or ]. That’s handy if you want to do a Free Transform (see #4 below) on multiple layers.
Let me jam in a couple more layer shortcuts that I use all the time: To add a layer, press Command-Shift-N. To skip the New Layer dialog box while you’re doing so, press Command-Shift-Option-N. And to make a selection into a new layer, press Command-J.
I count 45 entries in the “Keys for Using the Layers palette” keyboard shortcuts page in the Photoshop CS3 Help file (my faves above are the tip of the iceberg). But not one of the shortcuts is a mouse-free method of showing/hiding a layer. Sigh. The closest you can get is Option-clicking on a layer’s eyeball to toggle between a) hiding all other layers except that one, or b) showing all layers including that one.
-Philip
