Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts - Tips & Resources

In this tutorial I'll show you how to use Photoshop CS and CS2 to change your keyboard shortcuts, how to save sets of customized keyboard shortcuts, and how to print out your customized sets. If you have an earlier version of Photoshop, at the end of the tutorial you'll find some helpful tips and a list of sites where you can download collections of Photoshop shortcuts in PDF form.

How To Change Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts (CS & CS2 Only)
To create your own shortcuts in Photoshop CS or CS2, go to the Edit Menu and select Keyboard Shortcuts. The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box serves as a shortcut editor, and includes all the commands that support shortcuts.

To modify the keyboard shortcuts you'll have to create a new keyboard shortcut set by clicking on the New Keyboard Set button (the icon to be clicked is immediately to the left of the trash can icon). You'll then be asked to name and save your shortcut set. Now select a heading from the dropdown menu on the left that says Shortcuts For. This allows you to view all of the Photoshop commands in either the Application Menus, the Palette Menus, or the Tools.

Once you've selected a heading you can search through the contents to locate the command you’d like to change or create a shortcut for. Commands that already have shortcuts will be indicated in the menu. You can change these if you’d prefer by clicking on the shortcut, typing in a new shortcut, and pressing Accept at the top right side of the dialog box.

To make a totally new shortcut, click on the blank space beside the menu command and type in the shortcut you’d like to use. To save it click on the Add Shortcut button.

The hardest part here is finding a key combination that's not already taken. Even the Keyboard Shortcut command has a shortcut (it's Shift-Option-Command-K for Mac and Shift-Alt-Ctrl-K for Win).

How To Remove Shortcuts From A Command Or A Tool

Choose Edit> Keyboard Shortcuts. In the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box, select the command or the tool name whose shortcut you want to delete, and then click Delete Shortcut.

How To Delete A Set Of Shortcuts

Choose Edit> Keyboard Shortcuts. In the Set pop-up menu, choose the shortcut set that you want to delete. Then click the Delete icon (or the Delete Shortcut button), and OK to exit the dialog box.

Create Project-Specific Custom Workspaces (CS2 Only)
Photoshop lets you create custom workspaces that display just the palettes you need for a specific project, and in CS2 a new customized workspace can also include one of your keyboard shortcut sets.Choose Window> Workspace> Save Workspace. The option is listed under Capture. Just click on Keyboard Shortcuts and the active set will be saved with the new customized worskspace.

Context-sensitive Menus (they live in your mouse...!)
In addition to using keyboard shortcuts, you can also access many commands using context-sensitive menus. Context-sensitive menus only display commands that are relevant to an active tool, a selection, or a palette. To display a context-sensitive menu, right-click (Win) or Control-click (Mac) in a document window or palette. For example, when you have a file with layers, clicking on the document in this way will bring up a contextual menu filled with layer options. This saves you a trip to the palette flyout.

Save Them, Print Them, Learn Them
To print your keyboard shortcuts, go to Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts and click Summarize. Photoshop will then save your shortcuts to an html document that can be opened in any text editor or web browser. From there you can print a copy to keep as a reference. Sweet.

Photoshop 6 Shortcuts & Photoshop 7 Shortcuts
Although the option of creating your own shortcuts is only available in the latest versions, don't despair. In earlier versions many of the commands already have their own shortcuts set in the program. To learn more about these, go Help> Photoshop Help to launch the Photoshop Help pages.In Photoshop 7 or lower, you can find the shortcut commands in the Help menu's table of contents on the left-hand side of the page. Just scroll down to the very bottom. Macintosh and Windows each have their own index, and offer slightly different shortcuts for the same commands. Click on any of the headings and you'll be given a list of available shortcuts.Since the help pages are launched in a browser, you also have the option of printing these pages to use as a reference guide.


Get Your Free Photoshop Shortcuts PDFs...At GFX^TM Trevor Morris offers an assortment of free Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts PDF files. You'll find the following:


Shortcuts For Photoshop CS2 - PDF

• Photoshop CS2 keyboard shortcuts organized into four pages, by menu commands and by key (alphabetically).
• Mac version of the above Photoshop CS2 keyboard shortcuts.
• Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts (KYS), Menu Customization (MNU) and Workspace files, containing many additional shortcuts. 100% compatible with default keyboard shortcuts. All detailed in the above PDF.

Shortcuts For Photoshop CS - PDF

• Photoshop CS keyboard shortcuts organized into two pages (ideal for laminating as a two-sided reference). Page 1 organized by commands, page 2 by keys.
• Mac version of the above Photoshop CS keyboard shortcuts.
• Photoshop CS Keyboard Shortcuts (KYS) file containing many additional shortcuts. 100% compatible with default keyboard shortcuts. All shortcuts available in the above PDF.

Shortcuts For Photoshop 7 - PDF

• Photoshop 7 keyboard shortcuts organized into two pages (ideal for laminating as a double-sided reference). Page 1 is organized by commands, and page 2 is organized by keys.
• Mac version of the above Photoshop 7 keyboard shortcuts.

Shortcuts For Photoshop 6 - PDF

• Two page Photoshop 6 keyboard shortcuts.
• Two page Photoshop 6 keyboard shortcuts for the Mac.

Shortcuts For Photoshop 5 - PDF

• Photoshop 5.x keyboard shortcuts. Page 1 is organized by keys, and page 2 is organized by commands.

And while you're there explore the rest of the site, as it's one of the best Photoshop resource centers you'll find.

Shortcuts For Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw 3
The keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw 3 are available from PhotoshopNews (courtesy of Ian Lyons, Computer-Darkroom).

Power Shortcuts PDFs From The Adobe Evangelists Site
There are some free PDFs of Photoshop Shortcuts by Julieanne Kost & Daniel Brown that you can download from the Adobe Evangelists site. Look for:

Photoshop CS2 - Power Shortcuts
From the PDF: "In Photoshop CS2, many of the shortcuts for the application menus, palette menus and tools can be customized using the Keyboard Shortcuts editor. Although this document mentions some of the more common editable shortcuts, it also provides additional functionality only accessible through using keyboard modifiers which can't be changed through the Keyboard Shortcut editor."
To help organize the document, it is subdivided into the following 6 categories: The Tool Palette, Navigating the Work Area, Palette Shortcuts, Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, and Grab Bag (everything else).

You'll also find Power Shortcuts for Photoshop CS and Photoshop 7, as well as some other really good goodies.

Time To Control-W (Mac: Command-W) This Tutorial
There are so many 'hidden' features in Photoshop that can only be accessed through the shortcuts that I think the software engineers purposely added them as little rewards to create a treasure hunt for those of us who take the time to dive deeper into this amazing program.

Now go and study the shortcuts, because, as Trevor Morris says, "Keyboard shortcuts can not only improve your efficiency in Photoshop, but they can even provide you with functionality that might not be available by any other means."

And make sure to create a shortcut for having fun. That's essential!

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Tips For Working With Type In Photoshop CS2

Some Photoshop Font Preview Tips

Now that Photoshop has a nice font preview feature, you can get a glimpse of what your type faces look like right in your Character Palette menu. An extra nice touch is that the size of the font previews can be changed.

To do this choose Photoshop> Preferences> Type on the MAC. In Windows you'll find Preferences in the Edit Menu.

From there you'll find a new Type Preferences Dialog Box, and in it you'll see the option for three preview sizes: Small, Medium and Large. A tip here is that Small and Medium only change the size of the preview, but Large changes the size of the preview and the size of the font name as well.

Once you've made your selection click OK and samples of all of your fonts will now display on the right side of the Character palette menu in whatever size you selected. Try it out.

How To Turn Off Font Preview

In the Preferences dialog box choose Type and uncheck Font Preview Size, and the font preview will be turned off.

More Good Stuff

You'll also notice that beside each font there will be one of 3 symbols. A "TT" indicates a TrueType font, an "a" indicates a Postscript Type 1 font, and an "O" indicates an OpenType font.

Now here's another tip — when you scroll through the font list, if you have a lot of fonts (and who doesn't!) and you feel like it's taking forever to scroll through them, you can just hit one of the letters on your keyboard to jump to that section of your fonts. I also use this technique to quickly jump to the middle of my font list or to go right to the end, by simply hitting "M" or "Z" on the keyboard.

If you have a lot of fonts that start with the same letter, just type more letters from the name of the font for it to become selected. For example "my" will jump you instantly to Myriad.

For more precise control when browsing your fonts, you can also scroll through the list font-by-font by using your Up and Down keyboard arrow keys.

Use The Options Bar For Font Previewing

As an experiment, the next time you have the type tool selected, instead of choosing to view your font list through the Character Palette try using the Options Bar (the top bar that floats just below the menu) to view your fonts. No Options Bar showing? Make sure you have it selected to show by going to Menu> Window> Options.

On a big screen the Options Bar Menu gives me a much longer initial list and seems to be a little more speedy than the Character Palette Menu.

Making The Bounding Box For A Type Layer Visible

If you want to see the bounding box for a block of your text, simply select the Move Tool (V), click the type layer in the Layers Palette, and check Show Transform Controls in the Options Bar. Remember, this will only work if you have the Move Tool selected.

The other thing about this is that you can now start to scale interactively. Click a corner handle and drag to scale the height or the width. To keep the proportions of your scaling you have to Shift-drag a corner handle.

Change Type Orientation From The Palette

In the Layers palette just Right-click (MAC: Control-click) a type layer name and then choose the Horizontal or Vertical option from the menu that appears. If nothing changes, you're already in that orientation. I mention this because I sometimes get my vertical and my horizontal mixed up and accuse Photoshop of being stubborn before realizing my mistake.

Rasterize From The Palette Menu

You can now Right-click (MAC: Control-click) an editable type layer and then choose Rasterize Type from the menu that appears. Time-saver!

New Fast Warp Text Options

Select one of your editable type layers and Right-click (MAC: Control-click) - then choose Warp Text. The Warp Text dialog box will appear. Pick one of the styles from the Style dropdown menu and then start doing wonderful things to your type.

Make sure the Warp Text dialog box is not covering your text, because you have a live preview here - which you'll need to reference so you can tweak the settings to make it all just so beautifully perfect.

New Smart Guides For Smart MovesIf

you are working with multiple layers and want to align things, before you start to move a type layer, try turning on View> Show> Smart Guides. Smart Guides appear automatically to help you align shapes and selections.

Special lines appear when the active layer aligns with another layer in the image, and then they disappear when you're done. I love this!

Automatically Aligning Multiple Type Layers
Sometimes you'll have some type on different layers, scattered on your canvas, and find that you want to align the layers. It's now a very simple operation.

First select the layers that you want to align. Next go to the menu and choose Layer> Align and then pick from one of the sub-menu options. That's it!

Add New Text Close To Existing Text

When you add new text too close to some existing text the Type tool will sometimes react as though you want to edit the existing text, which can be extremely frustrating. To get around this hold down the Shift key while you click with the Type tool. This creates a new type layer, and will help you avoid any more mistaken assumptions from your type tool.

Shortcuts For Aligning Type

After you highlight your type you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to apply flush left, centered, and flush right:

Align Left: Shift-Control-L (MAC: Shift-Command-L)

Align Center: Shift-Control-C (MAC: Shift-Command-C)

Align Right: Shift-Control-R (MAC: Shift-Command-R)

Photoshop Type "A" Personality

Yes, I've been tested by experts and I have a Photoshop type "A" personality, which means I have an unnatural desire to learn everything about Photoshop, which also means I'll be updating this page as I discover new tips and tricks. So please come back every once in a while!

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SiteGrinder 2 — Photoshop Plugin

There often seems to be a strict division of labor within the world of web design and development. Creative professionals tend to stick to the Photoshop domain, while those well-versed in scripting are left to the task of implementing their work. Indeed, the two realms are quite different from each other, to which any of us even vaguely familiar with either can easily attest.

Essentially, Photoshop is a no-holds-barred design studio, offering the artist a seemingly endless array of creative options. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, Java and the like follow strict rules of engagement, requiring the developer to take any number of esoteric concerns into consideration in order to ensure that designs are properly displayed on the web.

Turn Photoshop Into A Complete Web Design Tool

SiteGrinder 2 seeks to bridge this gap between design and development. Basically, this program turns Photoshop into an easy-to-use and fully functional web design tool. With SiteGrinder 2, designers will now have the freedom to totally let their creativity loose and then, without skipping a beat, transfer their designs to the web. Bringing esthetic concerns together with more practical considerations, this program is an amazingly powerful tool that would make a fantastic addition to any web designer's bag of tricks.

Generate Your Web Pages Directly From Photoshop

By generating web pages directly from Photoshop, you'll be able to spend much more time on the creative end of the spectrum, since you'll know right off the bat how well particular designs will translate to the web. No more going back to the Photoshop drawing board after getting a phone call from your development team, telling you that what you had envisioned doesn't have a chance of being displayed on the web. You can immediately visually and interactively test your designs, which permits you to then make changes to either esthetics or functions while it's still relatively early on in the design process.

Pricing and Availability

Mac OS X and Windows versions of the SiteGrinder unlockable demo are available now via download. SiteGrinder 2 can be ordered from Media Lab's online store.

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