PS Shortcut Series – Tool Shortcuts
Introduction
In this article series I’ll explain some of the most used shortcuts inside Photoshop that, if used, will definitely save time in your projects.
Tool Shortcuts
First of all I’d like to start with the Tool Shortcuts because they’re one of the most used shortcuts in PS.Although,I suppose many know them already, for those that don’t, here’s the right place.I’ll take them in from top to bottom as they appear in the Tool menu (in the left side of the screen).
- Move Tool – V
- Rectangular Marquee Tool – M
- Polygonal Lasso Tool – L
- Quick Selection Tool – W
- Crop Tool – C
- Eyedropper Tool – I
- Healing Brush Tool – J
- Brush Tool – B
- Clone Stamp Tool – S
- History Brush Tool – Y
- Eraser Tool – E
- Gradient Tool – G
- Dodge Tool – O
- Pen Tool – P
- Horizontal Type Tool – T
- Path Selection Tool – A
- Shape Tool – U
- 3D Rotate Tool – K (PS CS4)
- 3D Orbit Tool – N (PS CS4)
- Hand Tool – H
- Zoom Tool – Z
Most of the tools have the first letter from their name as the shortcut button.For instance, Crop Tool has the letter C (from Crop).That’s the way you memorise them.
However, other tools, as Dodge Tool (O) for example, have a different letter than their name and you don’t quite have a relation to them, but in time, if you use them, you’ll get used to them.
Now you can figure out why I colored them in such way.
Of course, you don’t need to bother memorizing all of them right now, but it’s good to know that they exist and they can ease your workflow by just typing the letter of the tool you want to use.You can easily view the tools shorcuts by hovering over them and waiting for a tooltip that indicates the tool name and the letter shortcut.
By now, you might have noticed that some of the tools have an arrow in the right bottom side and if you click and hold, it displays several other tools that have the same letter shortcut.By default, you cannot change the tool by pressing multiple times the same letter.Instead, you have to hold down the Shift key + the letter of the tool you want to use.For instance, if I want to select the Slice Tool, that is under the Crop Tool, I’ll hold Shift + C, and it immediately cycles through the whole category of tools.
Now, if you don’t want to use the Shift key and instead, you want to cycle through the tools by pressing multiple times the letter shortcut you can actually do that by doing the following:
Edit -> Preferences -> General -> and uncheck the “Use Shift Key for Tool Switch” option.