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Everyone who has worked with Photoshop for any
length of time will tell you that the key to increased
productivity in front of the box is knowing the shortcut keys
for all the menu items. Now I'm sure there are some people out
there who know all of them, or nearly all of them, but you don't
need to. My advice is to start by knowing several of the the key
items that will immediatly save you time and money. I am going
to go over these here. In your Photoshop software box, there is
a shorcut key guide. My advice is to look at that every now and
then and remember one or two of the commands that you need
often. You'll be surprised at how fast they can add up. You'll
love Photoshop so much better once you know as many as you can.
For now, let's just concentrate on a few of the most important
of those.
I am going to give you all of these with the
Macintosh user in mind. If you are using a PC, just use the
Control key every time you see Command. Easy enough right?
The very first shortcut you should know, or you must know, is
Command + S. Hold down the Command key and hit the S with it
still held. This saves your document. I do this constantly while
I am working. I probably hit it every 3 or 4 minutes to make
sure I don't lose much information if I have a crash, or an
earthquake or even a sneak Tsunami. I can't tell you how many
times this little piece of info has saved me from hours of extra
work. Use this one liberally, rinse and repeat.
Second is the Undo command. To envoke this, hit
Command + Z. You'll also love this one, as it keeps you from
having to go to the edit menu or the history palette for a quick
undo.
Then you can learn some of the more subtle
commands. Personally, I couldn't live without the quick fill
command of using Option + Delete to fill with your current
foreground color and Command + Delete to fill with your current
background color. You can also set your foreground colors to
black and white (the defaults) by simply hitting the D key. To
alternate them, hit the X key.
Now, you certainly don't have to know all of
these, or any of them for that matter, to use Photoshop. But if
you want to be fast and efficient, you will need to know most of
them.
Below, I have created an image that shows you
many of the commands we just talked about, plus a few more of my
favorites. I hope this helps streamline your work in Photoshop.
Talk to you later.
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