Photoshop tips for quickness
I have found that no matter how ergonomic your mouse is or how many levels of sensitivity one's stylus has, there is nothing to make your work go faster than good use of keyboard shortcuts. So I thought it might be useful for me to present some of the lesser know Photoshop shortcuts for your review.
First and foremost, the simple 'tool switch' shortcuts are the most essential in my process and these are also the ones that I never see my designers using. This allows you to skip the mouse moving over to the needed tool and back to the canvas. I recommend printing them off and having them next to your screen until you've internalized them.
The Tools Are:
'M' - Marque Tools
'V' - Move
'L' - Lasso Tools
'W' - Magic Wand
'K' - Slice Tools
'J' - Healing brush Tools
'B' - Brush Tools
'S' - Stamp Tools
'Y' - History Brush Tools
'E' - Eraser Tools
'G' - Paint Bucket/Gradient
'R' - Smudge/Sharpen/Blur
'O' - Burn/Dodge/Sponge
'A' - Path Selection
'T' - Text Tools
'P' - Pen Tools
'U' - Shape Tools
'N' - Notes Tools
'I' - Eye-dropper Tools
'H' - Hand (temp shortcut - Spacebar)
'Z' - Zoom
Additionally, any tool can be easily switched with the next in it's series by holding the 'alt' key and clicking the tool. And of course, the spacebar temporary hand tool is essential for moving the document while using a different tool as well as all of the functionality of the 'shift' and 'alt' keys within nearly every tool and function in the program, if you are unfamiliar with these, just try it, that is what undo is for.
- Happy designing.
