So it seems that the posts on shortcuts for tools and functions have been quite popular! We’ve had many readers contributing their favorite Photoshop key commands in the comments. In case you’re only reading through a feed reader and you haven’t stopped by to comment, I pulled up some of them below.
Vivien of Inspiration Bit shared quite a few useful shortcuts that I didn’t mention. Did you realize Ctrl+F will repeat the last filter you used with all the same settings? Ctrl+H will show/hide all the extras (things that are not part of the document) like guides, grid, marching ants around a selection and target/active paths. This is a very useful function for getting a feel for how the design will look when printed, without all the additional markup. Ctrl+H will only hide these extras, not turn them off, though. And pressing Ctrl+H again will show only the ones that are turned on.
If you want to just get rid of a particular extra, you can use Ctrl+’ (apostrophe) to turn on/off the grid or Ctrl+; (semicolon) to turn on/off the guides or Ctrl+Shift+H to turn on/off the target path (like on a shape layer that you have selected).
Speaking of extras, did you know that you can Alt+click on a guide to change its orientation (vertical -> horizontal or vice versa)? And holding shift while dragging a guide will make the guide snap to ruler ticks; no more guessing exactly where 4 ¾ is!
Charity, who authors Design Adaptations, showed me a new shortcut for doing multiple undos: Ctrl+Alt+Z. I’ve been using Photoshop for about 4 years now and I never knew that one! Thanks Charity!
Join Us!
Come out of that reader and tell us your favorite shortcuts, too! We are a very nice community and we never bite! Maybe your shortcuts will be included in the next version of our Shortcut Shindig. And they don’t have to be just Photoshop shortcuts! We’ll look at Illustrator and InDesign quick keys, too.
Speaking of useful posts, what kinds of topics have you found useful on Creative Curio so far? What would you like to see more of (or see for the first time!)? Are there things that I’m not addressing that you would be interested in reading about? Let me know in the comments! I want to make Creative Curio a valuable resource for all my readers.
Also check out the Shortcut Shindigs for Illustrator and InDesign.
I’ve been using Photoshop for a long, long time, but I’ve picked up some new shortcuts. Not that the shortcuts are new; just that I never realised they were there. I can’t believe I missed the Ctrl+Alt+Z — very useful.
Now I just need to get in the habit of using them. One shortcut I use a lot is shift+apple+i to invert a selection.
Thanks, Lauren. More shortcuts please, and then a shiny pdf for me to pinup next to my new iMac (in my dreams).
I’ll make it in a snazzy font so it’ll be a real treat of a pinup for you, Johno ;)
I would have liked to have seen the differences between the operating systems and versions within Adobe software for shortcuts.
For example, now in CS3 the Ctrl+H (which is Apple+H for OSX) does NOT hide all extras, it hides the program itself, which you cannot do in Windows. Gotta say that shortcut is very annoying sometimes.
Hi Louisa! I’m glad you stopped by. You can always change your shortcuts! Go to the Edit menu and selecting Keyboard Shortcuts. The shortcuts are categorized by the menu the functions are in or the palette the tools are on. Just change what Cmd+H does! It would be interesting to see what changes in the different version of PS. I know that Ctrl+Alt+I used to bring up the file info dialog box in CS, then in CS2+ they made it the Image Size dialog. I think the new function for that shortcut is much more useful.