Photoshop Keyboard Quickies
Photoshop keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of time and effort from having to flip through menus and options. You can quickly click a few buttons and perform many different tasks that usually take multiple clicks and a lot of dragging to do. The following Photoshop keyboard shortcuts will make your life as a designer much easier.
In Photoshop, to size your brush in increments, with the brush tool selected, type [ to make your brush smaller, and ] to make your brush larger.
To make your brush larger by dragging, hold down the control and option keys and drag left to make your brush smaller and right to make it larger.
To drag to make your brush harder or softer, hold down control, option command and shift and drag left to make the brush softer and right to make it harder.
To effect the opacity of the brush, type any number on the keyboard and it will go to that percentage. For instance, type 7 for 70% opacity, and type 3 for 30% opacity.
Command/Ctrl + J duplicates a layer or pastes a selection on its own layer. Command/Ctrl + G With multiple layers selected will place those layers in a group.
Command/Ctrl + Option/Alt + I brings up the option to resize your image.
Command/Ctrl + Option/Alt + C brings up the dialog box to resize your canvas.
Command/Ctrl + T Transforms the contents of a selected layer or layers.
Command/Ctrl + B Brings up the Color Balance options.
Command/Ctrl + A Selects everything on the currently selected layer/layers.
Command/Ctrl + E Merges the current layer with the one below it.
Command/Ctrl + Shift + E Merges all visible layers.
Command/Ctrl + Option/Alt + Shift + E Merges all visible layers into a new composite layer.
Command/Ctrl + L Brings up the Levels dialog box.
Command/Ctrl + Z will undo the last thing you did.
Command/Ctrl + Alt/Option + Z will go one step back from what you just did. You can do this as many times as you have history states.
Command/Ctrl + F Runs the last filter that you used.
Command/Ctrl + D Deselects the current selection.
I hope these Photoshop Keyboard shortcuts are useful to you. If you know of more shortcuts, feel free to list them in the comments section below.
