| There's a shortcut for just about everything in Photohsop. If you want a list of all the shortcuts there's a good one here. Instead of trying to make a complete list what I'm going to do is make a list of the shortcuts I find very helpful when I'm coloring, designing, and just doing general things in Photoshop. Some you may already know, but some you may not. |
| Shortcut |
What it does |
| Ctrl+Z |
Undoes your last action |
| Ctrl+C |
Copies a selected area |
| Ctrl+X |
Cuts a selected area |
| Ctrl+V |
Pastes whatever was copied or cut |
| Ctrl+A |
Selects everything |
| Ctrl+D |
Deselects everything |
| Ctrl+Shift+I |
Inverts your selection |
| Ctrl+H |
Hides the marching ants around a selection. I use this all the time when I want to only work within a selected area, but I don't want to be distracted by Photoshop showing me the selection boundaries. This shortcut will also hide guides. Using the same key combination again will unhide whatever it was you hid. |
| Shift |
The shift key can do quite a few things. For the most part if you want things to be orderly the shift key is there to help. When you're selecting it lets you add to a selection instead of making a new one. When you're transforming something holding down the shift key will maintain the proportions. It will also let you snap to 45 degree increments when rotating something, which is good for making sure you're rotating it exactly 90 or 180 degrees. Holding down the shift key while using the Rectangular Marquee Tool or creating a rectangular shape it will make your selection or shape a square. It does the same thing when you select or create an elipse and makes it a circle. |
| Alt |
Holding down the Alt key while making selections will let you subtract from your selected area. The Alt key can also do a kind of cool thing when you're making a selection or creating a shape. If you hold it down it will change the point you started the shape from being the edge to being the center. |
| Space |
When you hold down the space bar you can sort of drag and drop your way around an image. This is particularly useful when you want to move around the image when you're zoomed in on it instead of using the scroll bars or zooming out and zooming back in on a new area. |
| Ctrl+U |
Opens the Hue/Saturation/Brightness adjuster |
| Ctrl+Shift+U |
Desaturates whatever you have selected |
| Ctrl+L |
Opens the Levels adjuster |
| X |
Toggles between your foreground and background colors. I use this for switching between black and white when drawing lines and for switching between two colors when coloring. |
| Ctrl++ |
Zooms in |
| Ctrl+- |
Zooms out |
| [ |
Decreases brush size. This isn't actually a shortcut I use with the keyboard, but I do have it programmed as a shortcut on my Wacom tablet. |
| ] |
Increases brush size. Just like the shortcut to decrease brush size I have this one on my tablet. |
| If you have a tablet and it has shortcut buttons I suggest playing around with them until you have a arrangment of shortcuts you find useful. I know some artists don't use them at all, but I find mine extremely helpful. If you're curious click here to see an image of the shortcuts I use with my tablet. |
