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You are here: Home / Web Design / Photoshop / Photoshop Shortcuts To Make Your Life Easier

Photoshop Shortcuts To Make Your Life Easier

April 27, 2011 by Dan

Since we are heavy users of Photoshop, we thought this brief collection of shortcuts will actually serve you well. No matter what your main area of interest is: architecture, interior or web design, you will find the following keyboard shortcuts pretty useful.

shortcuts

Chances are you know some of them, but I bet you don’t know them all.

This article is written in PC Photoshop format. If you are using a MAC, the following apply Ctrl = Cmd and Alt =  Opt

So without further ado, here we go:

1. Screen mode

Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle between Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen Mode With Menu Bar, and Full Screen Mode. This is useful especially when working with larger files, and you need to have a ensemble view of the image.

2. Pan or Hand Tool

Holding Space and Left Mouse Button at once when in Full Screen Mode, or in any other Screen mode when zoomed, will allow to move the image in any direction wanted.

3. Zooming

You can fast zoom in or out if you hold Alt while using the scroll wheel of your mouse.

4. Zoom to 100%

If you double click on the Zoom tool it will zoom the document to 100%.

5. Scale Font Size

Select the text you need to scale up or down, and then with Shift+Alt+< or > will scale the text down, or up. Also you can capitalize all characters in the selection if you press Shift+Alt+K.

6. Moving layers up or down in the hierarchy

Select the layer you want to bring to front or you want to sent to back, and hold Ctrl + [ or ]

7. Hide all layers but one

Hold Ctrl + Alt and click on the visibility icon of the layer you want to be seen, and all other layers will be hidden.

8. Tool Panels

Press TAB to toggle tool panels in and out of the screen.

9. Precise Mouse Cursor

Caps Lock will display the precise cursor.

10. Increase or decrease brush / pencil / eraser size

Press [ or ] to scale the size down or up. By pressing Shift + [ or ] will increase / decrease brush / eraser  hardness.

11. Opacity

You can increase / decrease a layer opacity by pressing one of the number keys (ie. 1 = 10%, 2 = 20%…). When you have the brush tool / eraser selected, pressing the number keys will adjust the brush / eraser opacity.

12. Duplicate layer

There are a few ways you can do this, but my favorite is Alt + Click and drag. This operation will create a new layer from the active layer / layers.

You can also duplicate the active layer by Alt + any of the arrow keys.

Ctrl + J will duplicate the active layer in the exact position.

13. Change Workspace background

You can change the default Photoshop grey workspace background color by following these steps:
1. select your desired color
2. select the Paint Bucket tool
3. Hold down Shift + click on the working area (outside of the document area)

14. Switch between opened images

Ctrl+ TAB will help you easy navigate through different opened windows in Photoshop.

15. Proportional Scaling

You can scale any layer by pressing Ctrl + T in order to activate the transformation operation, and then to scale it proportionally press Shift + click on any of the corners of the layer to scale it up or down. If you want the scaling to happen from the center of the layer press Shift + Alt + click on any of the corners of the layer.

Of course you can also consult the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menu option of Photoshop, where you can define your own shortcuts. Get to that menu with Ctrl + Alt +Shift + K.

Hope you enjoyed this short post, and if we missed something, or you think we can add to our collection, don’t hesitate to leave a comment with your thoughts.

Filed Under: Photoshop Tagged With: keyboard, Photoshop, shortcuts, tool

About Dan

Dan Fargo,the editor-in-chief of Archtopia, an online magazine dedicated to architects and designers.

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