Monthly Archive for August, 2009

The smartest thing you can do when working with Photoshop is to learn the essensial shortcuts and maybe a few advanced ones you’re always gonna use. So I’ll give you the most important ones and the ones I use a lot.

Different tools:
V – Move tool
M – Rectangular marquee tool
W – Magic wand
C – Crop tool
B – Brush
E – Eraser
P – Pen tool
T – Text tool
H – Hand tool

How to navigate:
Alt + scrolling on your mouse – zooming
Holding the spacebar down – brings you to the hand tool so you can navigate, when you release you get back to the previous tool
Tab – will take you to the professional userinterface where you dont have any windows up except your picture. If this ever happens and you dont find the way back to all the different tools (that has happened to me a few times hehe) just click Tab.

You’re maybe familiar with Alt + Tab that makes you hop from one windows window to the next one. When you’re inside any software you can use Ctrl + Tab to do the same within the software. Use this to switch between open projects in Photoshop. You can also use this anywhere else for example in your web browser like Google Chrome, Opera or Firefox.

Basic commands:
Ctrl + Z – undo
Ctrl + S – save
Ctrl + J – duplicate to new layer
Ctrl + Shift + N – new layer
Ctrl + I – invert selection
Ctrl + A – select all
Ctrl + H – deselect your selection

Image adjustments commands:
Ctrl + U – hue and saturation
Ctrl + L – levels
Ctrl + M – curves

These are the ones I use a lot. If I need something else I locate it somewhere in Photoshop. These will all speed up your workflow. Find the ones you use a lot and memorize them.

Enjoy the first free photoshop video tutorial where you learn how to do the Sin City effect, black & white picture with a colored object, using the pen tool. You also learn to use the burn and dodge tool to create highlights and shadows.