Digital Scrapbook Software: Some of My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts

I know that a lot of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users like to do most of their work using keyboard shortcuts. I have to admit that’s not me. I like using keyboard shortcuts, but I keep it to the basics – the things I do a lot. I just can’t memorize all the other ones and it tends to take me more time to remember the shortcut than to just use my mouse and the menus to get the job done.

So, here are some of the keyboard shortcuts I use daily. All these keyboard shortcuts are the same for both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Note: If you are a Mac user, use Cmd for the Ctrl key and Opt for the Alt key in the shortcuts listed below.

Undo and Redo

You probably already know that Ctrl-Z is the shortcut for undo. But, in Photoshop, this keyboard shortcut only performs the undo function on the last step of your editing. So, if you need to go back more than one step, you have to use the history palette.

But, using the shortcut Alt-Ctrl-Z allows you to undo multiple steps one step at a time. So, instead of using Ctrl-Z to undo, try to get into the habit of using Alt-Ctrl-Z so that you can use it repeatedly to go back as many steps as you need. BTW, the shortcut Shift-Ctrl-Z allows you to step forward one step at a time.

Zooming In and Out

There are a lot of ways to zoom in and out quickly in Photoshop. Here are my favorites:

• Space-Ctrl and marquee to zoom in on a specific area on your document
• Space-Ctrl and click to zoom in
• Space-Alt and click to zoom out
• Hold the Alt key down while scrolling your mouse wheel
• Ctrl+ (plus) to zoom in or Ctrl- (minus) to zoom out
• Ctrl-0 (zero) makes the document fit to your screen
• Ctrl-1 zooms to 100%

Change Brush Size and Hardness

Pressing the square bracket keys ( [ , ] ) increases or decreases the size of the brush that you currently have active and pressing the Shift key along with the square bracket keys will increase or decrease the hardness of the brush.

Moving Around

Press and hold the spacebar to temporarily switch to the hand tool which you can use for panning around your layout. Also, when you create selections and shapes using the marquee or custom shapes tools, holding the spacebar allows you to move the selections and shapes as you are create. Press the spacebar while keeping your mouse button held down as you’re drawing the selection or shape and you’ll be able to reposition the outline. Stop pressing the spacebar when you have the outline where you want it.

Deselect

To deselect a selection, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-D.

Fill and Color Shortcuts

Here are some shortcuts for working with color in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements:

• D = reset color picker to default colors (black foreground, white background)
• X = swap foreground and background colors
• Alt-backspace = fill with foreground color
• Ctrl-backspace = fill with background color

Create Selection from Layer Content

Ctrl-click on a layer thumbnail to create a selection from the filled pixels of a layer.

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