5 Useful Adobe Photoshop Shortcuts for Designers That Can Save You Time
Elwyn shares a handful of the best shortcuts for the photo editing and graphic design powerhouse, Adobe Photoshop.
In this world of graphic design and digital marketing, everything revolves around time. Time to complete tasks, time to learn new things, and time to produce results.
After some additional Photoshop time-saving tips? This guide will provide you with some of our very best hacks and shortcuts for newcomers to Adobe Photoshop.
In any given task you undertake as a graphic designer, there are fixed processes that you need to follow every single time in order to get the desired output. These standard processes involve multiple steps that can become monotonous after some time. However, these same tasks can be made a lot easier with the help of shortcuts. Adobe Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool used by designers worldwide and comes packed with numerous shortcuts that make working faster and more streamlined. Let’s take a look at 5 useful Adobe Photoshop shortcuts for designers that can save you time:
These time-saving hacks will speed up the most mundane processes in Adobe Photoshop
Create an action
Actions are recorded Photoshop instructions that can be played back at any time. This can save a considerable amount of time if you use the same set of instructions over and over again. You can record almost all actions in Photoshop, including tool actions, colour actions, layer actions, and even Photoshop-wide actions. To create an action, navigate to File > New > Action. You will be prompted to record the action from the current state of your Photoshop document. You can also name your action and add a description to help you remember its purpose. To play an action, navigate to File > New > Action again and select the action you would like to play. You can also select multiple actions with the help of a checkbox. Actions can also be nested, in which case they will be played one after another.
Shortcut for zooming
While it is true that zooming in and out of a document can be done with the help of a scroll wheel or the View > Zoom In/Out menu, there is an easier way to do it. Holding down the Alt key and pressing the + or - key will zoom in and out of the document, respectively. Zooming works the same way when you’re in the Eyedropper tool. Holding down Alt and pressing the + or - key will change the colour of the sample area. This can be used to quickly select a colour from your image.
Shortcut for toggling RGB/CMYK
Photoshop designers often have to deal with both RGB and CMYK colour modes. While RGB is used primarily for web and artificial lighting, CMYK is used for printing. It is often necessary to switch between these modes while designing a logo or a poster. You can switch between RGB and CMYK by pressing CMD + Shift + E. Pressing CMD + Shift + E again will switch you back to the previous colour mode.
Shortcut for showing guides
Guides can be used to align images, texts, or anything that needs to be positioned at a specific location. However, to enable guides for a particular section of your document, you need to navigate to View > New Guide and select the type of guide you would like to create. But what if you want to show all the guides in a single go? To toggle all guides on and off, press CMD + ;.
Shortcut for moving easily
The Move tool can be used to move almost anything in a document, including layers, images, and text. With this tool selected, you can move your image by clicking and dragging it. However, there’s a quicker way to move your image. By holding down the spacebar and pressing the up, down, left, or right arrow key, you can move your image by 10 pixels at a time. Similarly, you can use the same shortcut to nudge an image 10 pixels to the left or right. The same shortcuts can be used to move layers.
Conclusion
Shortcuts can make your workflow a lot easier when you know how and when to use them. While not all shortcuts are created equal, some are more crucial than others. Zooming, switching between RGB and CMYK, showing guides, and moving layers are some of the most useful shortcuts you will ever come
DOES PIXELHAZE ACADEMY HAVE A TRAINING COURSE FOR ADOBE SOFTWARE?
At present, at PixelHaze academy, we have a course on Adobe Photoshop with a focus on photo editing which we will be adding additional chapters to through the course of this year.
We’re also excited to announce that we are launching an Adobe Illustrator course with a standalone mini-course dedicated to school students as they learn to work with creative software for the very first time. Both courses should be available by the end of 2022, so stay tuned!
PixelHaze Academy VIP members will be able to access these courses as part of their annual subscription. If you’re interested in our annual subscription, it gives you access to all of our own PixelHaze courses, and ones we continue to create. The subscription is only $60 per year or $35 for students. You can also buy individual courses at our PixelHaze Academy Campus.
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