Ten easy photoshop shortcuts

Beginners photoshop help. (pc windows)

Ten simple but useful keyboard commands in photoshop.

1) The spacebar.
Hold down the spacebar when you want to navigate around your photo. It brings in the hand tool and is nice and quick. Letting go will put you back on the last tool you were using.


2) X key.
Useful when using quick mask mode because it switches your foreground and background colours.


3) The [ ] keys.
These little babies change your brush size quicker than you can say 'brush!'. [ makes it smaller and ]
makes it bigger.

4) Ctrl + and Ctrl -
These combis zoom in and out of your pic instead of having to select the magnify tool from the menu.

5) Ctrl spacebar and Alt spacebar
These do the same as number 4, for those of you who favour the spacebar. ( of course those of you with mouse scroll whell can use that instead)

6) Caps lock
Use this when using most of the tools and it will turn the cursor into a cross hair for more precise use.

7) V key
This brings up your move tool and is handy when working with selection layers amongst other things.

8) File >automate > contact sheet
Not exactly a shortcut but a useful tool. If you are doing a batch of pics for someone and want to print a sheet of mini proofs (contact sheet) then this is for you. Just save all the pics into one folder and select this folder in the menu. Voila! a page full of mini pics for your friends/clients to choose from.

9) Shift key
If you hold this down when using various tools (i.e brush tool) it will interpolate the space between any two points and fill them in with a straight line of the diameter of the tool you are using. Just click on your starting point, hold down the shift key and click again somewhere else in the photo and the line will be created. Useful when using the EXTRACT tool or when making manual selection, if used properly.

10) Ctrl S
Activates the 'save' option and saves your masterpiece over the existing file. Shift Ctrl S Will allow you to save as a new file in a location of your choice.


There are a lot of shortcuts in photoshop. This is only a simple 10 that may help newcomers to this amazing piece of software. I could type a whole load more but it can get confusing. Learn a few at a time until it becomes instinctive before trying to learn more.

Happy photoshopping!

Tco

Nice ones, keep an eye on No. 6, cause it also makes other things not work the way you want, ........ as does 16bit mode!

Alistair

Absolutely...Cheers for the heads up

sure does i found out the hard way
grrrr
love these lil helpers hehe

Be careful of no.10

Always make sure you have a master copy of the image you're working on rather than saving the original.

You may make a mistake and lose the original but also you degrade the image ever so slightly when you keep saving. i tend to use save as where possible

__________________
The summer is here and the time is right,
We're going racing in the street....Bruce Springsteen

Canon Forever

1Dmk2,10D, 20mm,28-70mm,200mm, Elinchrom3000,1500,600's,500's, Multiblitz200,Bronica SQb, expensive Manfrotto tripod

Though if you use TIFF files, which are deemed lossless then there should be no degradation. Its mostly for jpg. Even then unless it is large output format the degradation is not hugely noticable. Also if the file is to be used for commercial print, the inconsistancies of the printing process (litho) can be far more dramatic than your own final file.

lol !! touche pussycat

family snaps always jpegs but like you say anything for business gets treated in a different manner...

__________________
The summer is here and the time is right,
We're going racing in the street....Bruce Springsteen

Canon Forever

1Dmk2,10D, 20mm,28-70mm,200mm, Elinchrom3000,1500,600's,500's, Multiblitz200,Bronica SQb, expensive Manfrotto tripod

Glad I caught your eye Andrew. Looked at your site and really impressed by your pics. May have to pick your brains in the future if you have the time and no objections mate.
pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease

TIFF DNG, etc are lossless formats that can be saved, resaved etc many times over with no loss, jpg as you quite rightly point out will loose quality each and every time they are saved, the key is saved, not just opened and closed.

I've got to agree with Andy, only ever work on copies of images, if you use ligthroom, it offers you the option of opening the files in Photoshop as copies with the Lightroom changes.

Alistiar

sure thing Tco

since you ask so nicely and you the correct camera equipment!! lol

maybe you can do the same for me too. always looking to pick more tips, tricks and ideas

__________________
The summer is here and the time is right,
We're going racing in the street....Bruce Springsteen

Canon Forever

1Dmk2,10D, 20mm,28-70mm,200mm, Elinchrom3000,1500,600's,500's, Multiblitz200,Bronica SQb, expensive Manfrotto tripod