If you do much work with brushes you need to change the size constantly. Cmd + G will create a new group and if you have layers selected at the time, it will place the layers inside your new group. Use layer groups to organize layers and keep all the different sections of your design straight. Speaking of groups, even if you name your layers your documents are probably a huge mess. You could drag a layer down to the new layer button, but it’s far quicker to just hit Cmd + J and duplicate the layer or group. Often the quickest way to create that next element is to duplicate your existing shape. When designing a complicated website or app interface you are going to end up with a ton of layers. Pressing 4 then 5 in rapid succession will set the opacity to 45%. If you want something more precise press two numbers quickly. When your move tool is selected pressing 1 will set the opacity at 10%, 2 at 20%, and so on. Next time, instead of messing with the opacity slider to fade out a layer (which requires using the mouse), use your number keys instead. The top layer will clip to the bottom one! Simply hold down the option key and click in the space between the two layers. You could mask or erase away the part you want to hide, or instead you could just clip it to a layer that has the right shape. Let’s say you created a texture, but you only want to apply it to a part of your image. This is handy for when you want to create a preview or selection of your design or for exporting shapes for the web. What does the E do? When combined with Cmd and Option it creates a flattened version of your entire document on a single layer. So the first part of that shortcut creates a new layer. Unfortunately this also throws up the new layer dialog, which I never use. So by adding the option key in there as well you can suppress that dialog and skip a step. Add shift in there (Cmd+shift+N) and it creates a new layer. (N) looks like it should have something to do with “new”-and it does.
Let’s dissect this one to give you an idea of how keyboard shortcuts are created in Photoshop. This is really two keyboard shortcuts in one, so you can do them separately, but together they make the longest shortcut I know, so I just have to include it. If you have a favorite - or you’ve created one that is particularly clever - post a comment below.
So this is my short list of shortcuts you’ll actually use. I could write a giant list of thousands of keyboard shortcuts, but then you wouldn’t know which ones are actually useful. That means my left hand is constantly in use for switching between tools, modifying the function of the active tool, or just doing commands that would otherwise take a bunch of steps.
#DELETE KEYBOARD SHORTCUT PHOTOSHOP PRO#
In order to turn pro you need to get your other hand involved.Ībout 30% of all my input and commands into Photoshop come from the keyboard rather than the mouse. And my guess is your design process is slow as hell.
If that’s you, you’re an amateur designer. In other words, new designers do 99% of their work with just their dominant hand on the mouse. When most people think of design they think of using a mouse (or pen if you’re really cool) to move elements on the screen to bring your dream to life.