Lessons

Lesson Info

Keyboard Shortcuts Part 2

all right so another example of and this is a great shortcut because it's just sort of a global idea to see if you're doing something in photo shop and you want to add functionality to whatever you're doing there's a really good chance that the option key on the mac bolt for windows air either to say option all because it's easier option all key is going to be that one key want to use as your modifier so let me just show you a few examples of that so for example not that I would I don't typically do there's a whole lot but just as an example if I'm in a dialog box like levels where I'm applying levels and I just decided to experiment and I'm moving sliders around and trying all these things in a certain point I go yeah yeah I hate that I want to start again many of us probably clicked the cancel button and then reopen the dialog box because that's just a way to reset well watch this cancel button as I hold down option all it changes to reset and I could just start again so that almost ...

every dialogue box and there's very few exceptions I know of almost every dalek blocks if it has a cancel button you can change it to reset so that means if you're doing filters or layer styles or anything where you're let's say perhaps slightly unwilling to experiment because you don't want to make any commitment to make a change this is a great way because now you should feel free to move things around say what does this do anything oh whoa I don't like that at all you know you can reset it very quickly so that's one example the other one is if I have my move too well selected and I click on a layer and move it well it just moves if I hold down option all it makes a copy so any time you want a quick copy of something all drag is a lot easier than doing some any other method especially I mean I could use a keyboard shortcut to duplicate the layer but if I know I want to duplicate and put it right there that I just did it in one step instead of going duplicate moved to a ll drag this just does it the same way if I am working with free transform and this is one of the ones that I it's been around forever but I still see lots of people working too hard with this so actually let me do it a different way let's uh I'll just open this other one for second okay I'm gonna make this one smaller for the purpose of demonstration for this to work okay so a very common thing that happens people is they copy and paste or they drag and drop one image onto the other and the one they've dragged drug dragged the one they've moved is way too big I never knew the past tense of to drag I drag it did that so when I dragged it over it was way too big so people hit commander control tea for free transform was a short cut everyone learns very quickly but first of all there's two problems the first one is I can't see the handles to be able to click on them and scaled them down so the trick there is a few press commander control zero for fit and window it fits it in the window to show the handles but here's something I see people dio even today and it surprises me because this is been around for a long time is they want to scale this down to fit so they hold down the shift key key proportional go to this corner and then go to this corner and then go back to this corner and again old joke if you're getting paid by the hour do it this way but instead hold down the shift key for proportional proportional but if you also hold down the altar or option key its scales towards the center and in no time at all I was able to do that scale towards the center thing way more quickly than I would have before so that's another example that kind of modifier is transformed towards the centre it also works the same way with a pure drawing with some tool and it makes sense to draw from the center out words than you make sure option alters held down and if you're unsure this is a perfect example one of those cases where just try it you'll see very quickly if I'm take my marquee tool and I click and drag it's drawing a circular marquis from kind of corner to corner but if I try it again and hold down the optional key it grows from the center outwards in some cases that's just easier to determine where it's going to go now my brain is telling me that if that circle's not in the right place I'm going to keep my finger on option or old but I want to re position it so the space bar which I previously showed you was a short cut for the scrolling hand tool it has a dual life because the other purpose it serves if you're in the middle of creating something and you hold down the space bar you can reposition it so if you realize that it's kind of the right shape it is in the wrong position now I'm holding down two keys option or because I want to continue drawing from the centre outwards and space bar to reposition am I let go of the space bar I can now keep drawing it from the centre outwards so there's a lot of finger dancing going on one or using photo shop is switching between the right key to make sure you're getting the result you want there's one other one that uh oh there's a couple of times I forgot oh yeah that's a good one so if I'm using my paintbrush tools I passed b for brush and I realized the color that I want is that yellow right there I need to sample it from the photo which means the eyedropper tool now I could switch to the eyedropper and switch back or if I hold good old option bulky down you see it temporarily gives me eyedropper aiken sample the color and then instantly start painting with it so this is extremely useful as we'll see in techniques later on when you're trying to do some painting that mimic the colors they're already there you're constantly having to pick up a new color that option all key makes all the difference if I have documenta let's just add a couple more layers here so we have something all right so I got layer here and I'll just make another copy that just because I want to have something on there as you start to get multiple layers if I want to look at on ly one layers I want to just focus my concentration on one layer I don't wantto delete the rest I think I just want to say on ly show me this one layer you know by now I'm sure that there are these little ii cons that indicate the layer visibility instead of turning all the other ones off I hold down optional then click on this one to say on ly show that and then it's a tuggle switch and it goes back again so as a quick way instead of having to go hide hide hide hide hide skip one hide hide hide this doesn't more quickly I will warn you in advance though this one is a little I would never use the word flakey because nothing adobe does is ever flaky but every so often if you do that function toe on ly show one layer if you do anything certain functions if you try and optional click again they don't all come back again it's like it's almost like you have to use it as a quick viewing technique but if you start doing other things like changing opacity or something it can kind of interrupt that onoff switch or something I don't know what the reason is but that's one of things that it does now just as a way of remembering this because this is sort of an important it is an important functions remember what this tool does what the function of the option or all key many years ago I had a student who interesting way of remembering things and she'd give nicknames to everything she could remember the actual name of a tool shed call it some like the something or other tools and at one point she referred to the option bulky is the make better key and at first like ana laughed at and I thought then I thought maxxie a really good way of remembering it because if you think about it in almost every function the optional key is making that better or at the very least providing additional functionality which doesn't sound schools make better but that's really what it is so if you are trying to remember which key is it that I want to hold down to do these things that's one of them wanna waste remembers think make better or add mohr and that way we'll you'll get more functionality and again simple way to tell if you're doing some function and you're unsure hold down optional and see what it does and you may see a button change you may see something else happened the cursor may change look here I don't feel well you can see that but see I've got my move tool if I put my finger on option all that turns into a little double headed arrow was just telling me you're going to drag a copy so usually the cursor will try to help you by giving some additional feedback ok a lot of the tools we use in photo shop take advantage of or rely on the size of your brush so not just the pink brush tool but any tool like the spot healing brush or the healing brush or the clone stamp too will all still use the brushes panel to say what size and hardness of brush do you want and I still see a lot of people and again that's no fault of their own because when you're teaching yourself you probably wouldn't run along this unless you happen to be one people says I'm gonna press every single key and see what happens so as you can see have a fairly large brush right down I don't want the brush to be that big well rather than coming away from where I am to change it over here which I certainly could do there's several choices available to me the first one is thie bracket keys just the regular like the left bracket right bracket changed the size so left bracket is time I press it the brush is getting smaller right bracket each time I press it it's getting bigger I tend to go click click click click with my finger instead of holding it sometimes it suddenly jumps too big or too small so that's really just going through and saying bigger or smaller a few versions ago I want to get take a guess and say c s six perhaps there's a dhobi likes to call things and this one's called heads up display or something on but if you hold down control option or right click ault on pc it brings this little information first of all it's telling me that my brushes fifty pixels in diameter it's got zero hardness which means it's very soft and it has a capacity of forty percent because that's what I said in my options bar if I want a bigger brush I dragged to the right but the difference is I'm getting much more visual representation of it so I want to make the brush bigger smaller just dragging to the left and right is going to show me this is the size of your brush because I want to also change the hardness maybe want a harder edge brush unholy on the same case haven't changed anything it's still control altar right click she's may control option right click holt left and right is the size up and down is the hardness so if I want a harder brush and see as I pull all the way down to the other brush ape is very hard now by dragged back up it's very soft and it's showing me not just visually but the numbers are changing so again if you're trying to on the flight to say I just need to brush that's bigger smaller or harder softer if you keep going up to that brush picker to change it that works but it's just longer the third option which is the one that I would use since I have it is I have my pen and tablets set up to be pressure sensitive so you can see by the size of my brush ape I currently have a very large sized brush but if I barely touched my tablet you see so I got the wrong one hold on one second course I picked the brush where this isn't gonna work properly based on some other setting ok he says he had his brush pressure turn on but then he forgot to actually turn it on so let's try again so now you can see I'm barely touching the brush and it's much smaller and as I press harder it's getting bigger so now it's me changing the size of brush on the fly with the intensity of my tablet now saturday is a class just on using your walking tablets for those people that are either have a tablet and our don't feel like you're using it to the full extent or are thinking about getting one that's what that half day class is all about is how to do all this kind of thing but for our purposes changing the size that brush on the fly by using pressure sensitivity eyes a huge plus the other thing that this is probably one of the most unknown keyboard shortcuts every time I tell people this they're like what is that new and I'm like no it's kind of been around for a while ah lot of us have a lot of russia's this is fairly new I think this was photoshopped cc that this in the past you just in the brush picker you just saw all your brushes now it shows you the last few brushes you used so if you want to get back to a brush you previously used they pop up very quickly which is very nice but what I want to do is let so let me make this obvious here this is the first brush in my brush panel you can see it's a very soft edge brush it's one hundred sixty six pixels in size and then my second brush I'm going to make considerably smaller and it's very hard so I'm using about to use this tool and suddenly I realize it's the wrong brush I should be using the next one over so if you press now technically it's the period key which is really weird but if you look above the period has thie greater than symbol which almost looks like a narrow pointing to go that way so if you press that key it goes to the next tool excuse me the next brush ape I should say so as I'm doing this I can see the brush is changing on the fly and I'm not going anywhere near my brush picker I'm just pressing the period key and as you might guess anyone who's looking at a keyboard right now if I want to go back the other way I used the comma key which again look don't look at the comma look att thing above it which is thie less than symbol which looks like an arrow going the other way so you can go back again and this is a really nice way if you know you're using ah core of two or three brushes if you need to get to a very specific brush that you don't know where it is in the middle of all your brushes right where you're working if you on the mat control click or when those right click you can pop up this equivalent of the brush picker and then you can say l there is the one I want and as soon as you have enter then you're ready to start using your weird butterfly water brush because you know you might want to do that I don't know why but you might so those air some functions owen if you'd ever define a custom brush it's always the last one so let's say I was working up here on this other brush and I wanted to use the custom brush I just defined shift and period which would be shifted and greater than goes to the very last brush in your brushes panel so the period and comic ear like that way back and forth right left having the shift key goes first last so it's just another way to activate get into your brush that much more quickly okay so that's just a few little things about some brushes and that overall a reminder about the role of that option all key is that make better key that really is going to help you do things in a much more efficient manner