26 Keyboard Shortcuts for Photoshop
If you’re anything like me, post processing can sometimes be the most time-consuming part of your workflow. Today’s post is designed to help you get at least a little bit of that time back with keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop.
Keyboard shortcuts allow you to instantly access certain steps in Photoshop, without having to navigate through a bunch of tabs and drop down menus to find them. This not only saves you time, but also makes your job a little easier.
Here are 26 of my favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for Photoshop:
B – Brush Tool
S – Clone Stamp Tool
J – Healing Brush Tool (This shortcut can also bring up the Spot Healing Brush Tool or the Patch Tool – depending on which tool was last used)
D – Change your color palette to default Black & White
X – Swap your foreground and background colors in your color palette
W – Magic Wand Tool
T – Text tool
Z – Zoom Tool (click to zoom in, hold down alt while clicking to zoom out)
[ – Make brush size smaller
] – Make brush size larger
1 – Set brush or layer opacity to 10%
2 – Set brush or layer opacity to 20%
3 – Set brush or layer opacity to 30%
4 – Set brush or layer opacity to 40%
5 – Set brush or layer opacity to 50%
6 – Set brush or layer opacity to 60%
7 – Set brush or layer opacity to 70%
8 – Set brush or layer opacity to 80%
9 – Set brush or layer opacity to 90%
0 – Set brush or layer opacity to 100%
Ctrl +J (Cmd + J) – New layer via copy (can be used to duplicate current layer, or if a selection is made, this shortcut will bump only that selection up into a new layer)
Ctrl + Alt + Z (Cmd + Opt + Z) – Undo previous steps
Ctrl + I (Cmd + I) – Invert (when using selections, this will select the opposite of what is currently selected. When working with layer masks, it will apply the opposite color to your mask than what is already being used.)
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Cmd + Opt + Shift + E) – Stamp Visible (merges all visible layers into one new layer – great for composites! Plus, it leaves all your work in tact, without flattening!)
Ctrl + T (Cmd + T) – Free Transform (allows you to resize, rotate, etc)
Ctrl + G (Cmd + G) – Group selected layers (hold down Ctrl key to select more than one layer)
I hope you enjoy these quick tips!
Please don’t feel pressured to commit them all to memory right away. If 26 new shortcuts seems a little daunting, try experimenting with a few each week until you get the hang of them. Keep in mind that the more you use them, the more they become like a second nature and the more time you’ll save!
Feel free to pin this post to Pinterest so you can come back to it later if you need to.
Have a favorite shortcut that isn’t listed above? Share it with us in the comments below!
Related Posts:
• 5 Easy Ways to Speed up your Editing Workflow
• How to Batch Edit to save time in Photoshop
If you’d like to take your Photoshop learning further, I’d love to invite you to join me for my online Photoshop course, The Photoshop Fanatic. It’s an easy-to-follow, go-at-your-own-pace course that teaches Photoshop from the very beginning. It begins with a walk-through introduction and explanation of the various tools, layers, and filters in the program. You’ll learn what they are, how to use them, and then we’ll build on that knowledge, working our way up to achieving full, in-depth edits with ease.
To see if The Photoshop Fanatic Course is right for you, click here to read more about it.
