Hello! It’s Monday so it must be time for a new Photoshop tip! Today I’m sharing my top 12 basic Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. If you aren’t already using keyboard shortcuts I encourage you to try learning one new shortcut a week. You’ll be amazed how quickly you learn them and how much more efficient your workflow is by keeping your hands on the keyboard.
- H (Hand Tool) — When zoomed in to a portion of your photo, this command brings up the hand tool which allows for quick panning. Also, if the hand tool is active and you hold down the Ctrl key, you can zoom in without changing to the zoom tool. Likewise, if you hold down the Alt key, you can zoom out without changing tools.
- Z (Zoom Tool) — This command just brings up the zoom tool, which allows you to zoom in. Like with the hand tool, if you hold down the Alt key, it temporarily switches to the zoom out mode.
- Ctrl + 0 (Fit on Screen) — This is a quick-and-dirty command to get the entire photo in front of your eyes. That’s Ctrl + zero, not the letter “O”.
- B (Brush Tool) — The brush is an extremely useful tool when working with masks, and I’m constantly using this command along with the hand and zoom tools.
- Ctrl + Z (Undo) — Very useful for the little mistakes we all make.
- Tab (Hide/Show Palettes) — Hiding the palettes gives you a little more working room, thus decreasing your need to pan and zoom while editing.
- D Default Foreground and Background Colors: Resets the Fore/Background color to the default color setting of black and white.
- Ctrl + A — Selects everything in one layer or image
- Ctrl + D — Deselects anything that is selected.
- Ctrl + E — Merge Layers: Merges all the layers into one.
- Ctrl + C — Copy: copies selection
- Ctrl + V — Paste: paste selection
I’ll see you here next Monday with my favorite intermediate keyboard shortcuts.
Marcie
Love the tab key tip. Didn't know that!