Lessons

Lesson Info

Customizing Your Own Shortcuts

How many people here use keyboard shortcuts and photo awesome if you one of the people that kind of went like this let's look, I kind of do I think one of the reasons is because you're trying to memorize someone else's shortcuts whereas if it's your shortcut that you made I think it's easier to remember because in your head you know I made this shortcut for this purpose so let's take a look at how that works here's the example that I will use because I'm a huge fan of using layer masks because instead of erasing or deleting when she'll talk about in another class I like to use a layer mask so what I found myself doing was I would make a selection I have to come over here and click on the add layer mass but which doesn't seem like a big thing but if I could keep my mouse right where I didn't just press a shortcut and go bang layer mask to me I would like that better and that's a simple example sometimes you go to do something and it's like you have to go to some manually go layer smart ...

object you go like three levels down so again you could create a shortcut for that but let's look a look take a look at this example of I want to have a keyboard shortcut that any time I want to add a layer mask instead of clicking a button, I just press my own combination of keys so it resides in the same place it's down here in this case it says keyboard shortcuts so you see it's really the same dialogue box there's menus there's keyboard shortcuts you can do them at the same time so here is the challenging let me put this back to the defaults for second here's the challenging part of creating keyboard shortcuts almost any possible keyboard shortcut you could think of is already taken so what you have to do is allocated an existing keyboard shortcut away from something and putting it on to what you want. So that means you have to make a decision somewhere along the way to say, well, I used this existing keyboard shortcut or not so let's use this example so I'm going to go to layer and dig down here far enough I know it's down here somewhere later mask reveal selection is what I want to give a shortcut for. So you just click off to the side about to say here's where I want to change a keyboard shortcut. So at this point this is the challenging part is finding a keyboard shortcut that's either not well, I wouldn't say either it's already going to be spoken for you just have to determine is the existing shortcut more important to you than the one you want to use so I'm trying to think of a shortcut that what to do, something that would be easier for you to remember, so I'm thinking something with l for layer mask, so I'm kind of cheating harold, because I already kind of know this one, but this is the process you would go through say, I'm going to try, uh, command shift l or control shift l so you type it in and then it tells you at the bottom there it says, hold on second, this is already in use and will be moved from and then it tells you what the existing one is. So in this case, it tells me it's going to be used removed from something called auto tone, something called auto tone. I'm like wait there's something called auto telling that has his own shortcut I'm never ever going to use that, so I'm like, you bet all accept that change now if it came up and said this is going to be moved from levels, you might want to rethink that because that's a pretty standard shortcut so that's kind of the point is you type in a shortcut you think will work for you, and then it will tell you what the existing one is and you can decide on a case by case basis, and maybe I shouldn't do that so it's completely up to you but I would not recommend changing all the kind of standard ones unless it's someone else's machine and then you change switch copy and paste and do all that kind of do that that would be bad don't ever do that but you could but that's that's why it's so personal I'm going to accept this because I honestly no I've never used auto tone and probably never will so therefore to me that's a shortcut that I'm ok with so I hit this button says except and I click ok and now inside only I've got a keyboard shortcut that says add a layer mask so that's the thought process you go through what I did the first time I realized this is I started looking to go well I wonder what else there are shortcuts for that or I will never use and I found a look there's another one auto contrast and auto color both of those are short our commands that I can't see myself using so there's two more short cuts that are available to me so I spent about five minutes to just kind of skim through the menus and went is another one that I can't I don't really use very much if at all and I think I came up with a least ten or twelve that I thought these air shortcuts that I could use for a purpose that makes better sense to me and that's because again, someone who will be their job was to say let's allocate keyboard shortcuts and they just however they did it I don't know but that's that's kind of the thought process you go through and as you look, you can see for example, there's other filters like vanishing point it's kind of a cool filter, but it how you use it once in a blue moon so that to me is a waste of a valuable keyboard shortcut for something that I rarely use, so I'm not suggesting you would find it has to be things that you never use it might be thing to say why use that occasionally, but you have to kind of rank it on a day to day basis on an average day how many times you for example at a layer mask versus liquefy or versus something else? So for things that I don't use is often I ranked those, so what I did was I had here are ten shortcuts I found that I knew I would literally never use here's another five that I used so rarely I'd be ok with shifting that shortcut to something that I use, so when I'm working away on my machine, someone looking on my shoulder be like what just happened there because I pressed three keyboard shortcuts for things that don't normally have short cuts just to speed up my work so that was the other tagline that should that could have been on the name of this class is how to customize photo, shop and work faster because part of that's part of the whole point of why are we doing this? Is to make our life easier and to be able to work faster. Okay, so you have the option is going to undo this part here of changing the keyboard shortcuts for menus, both the main menus and the panel menus and also for the tools themselves. Now this is a dangerous territory to go into his let me preface this by saying once again, I would not recommend that you suddenly change the crop tool from sea tow like pee or something like that. There are a few functions, though, that I personally use all the time that I would rather have a shortcut for now let me take a slight timeout, backtrack for a second and say, for those people using keyboard shortcuts, I still find a lot of people don't use this set of shortcuts, and to me, these are the first shortcuts you should learn. So if you're one of those people, that kind of was like I don't will use keyboard shortcuts here's a great place to start because it's one letter it's not commander control shift option what it was just like a letter so for example my mouse is over here in the top right hand corner I now need to switch to the move tool instead of going all the way over to my toolbox clicking on the move pulling coming back I just pressed because I know that's the tool shark cut for move so most of them that works he wasn't a great example to start with many of them are very logical like em for marquis and see for crop and tea for type and l for lasso and others like move or a bit more of a stretch of your imagination and you have to think the for move because that's otherwise I don't know how you remember some of them are just really weird but that's a great place to start with keyboard shortcuts because instead of constant especially the bigger your monitor your have that's a lot of real safety to go click on the last so come back here click on the paintbrush comeback here instead of going I'm working right here in our d my brush to a pest presby for brush and I did my move to the back so there's two options for this by the way one is pressing the letter it will switch tools there's also a funk really came out I want to say around photoshopped cs five or six maybe called spring loaded keys which is the same concept but slightly different. In that last example, I pressed be so now I actually switched to the brush tool, and then I press v to get back to the move, tow instead. If I click and hold my finger on the letter b aiken brush. But soon as I let go, it goes back to the move tool. So if you need to constantly switching back and forth between two tools instead of going be the you just press and hold one tool. So that part has got nothing do with customizing, but always like to mention acts. A lot of people, I believe, under utilize the power of those single letter shortcuts, but here's an example of where I made a fairly significant change, and I will preface by saying, I am in no way advocating the opinions of this next short cut her only the mind, and you should not take them as it's for how you prefer. But I realized that I use the color picker all the time. That's kind of like my main way to choose color because, you know, you have this watches panel, but I use the color picker, which is this thing right down here, so I click on it and it opens up the color picker. But because of where it's located it means if I'm working over here in the top corner with my brush and I want to change the color I have to leave where I'm working to go and change the color and hope that I come back to the same area and I find myself wishing for many years I wish there was a way I could allocate a keyboard shortcut to the color picker which up until recently again I would probably say c s six I believe when they change this you couldn't there wasn't that ability but now a little back to keyboard shortcuts you see, I can also go to the tools and I would skip all these top ones because I mean I tend to just keep those where they are if they go far enough down you'll see uh there this foreground color picker now if you thought you think is a challenge to find a keep combination of command shifter all control all something it's even worse here because it's one letter so I can guarantee you every letter is already spoken for so what you have to do is make the decision so again let me add I'm not necessarily recommending you should do exactly this but this is the thought process you should go through so I thought to myself what would be a shortcut letter I could remember for the color picker and I thought p but when I did it said well that's our ian used by the pen tool so I thought to myself ok, how many times in an average day do I use the color picker and it was one hundred seventeen I don't really know but it was a lot and I thought to myself how many times on average day do I use the pen tool minus twenty seven my use of the pen tal has decreased dramatically compared to say six or seven years ago because of other selection methods so for me personally I thought for the few times I still use the pen tool I'm ok with going and clicking on the pencil in the toolbox I'd much rather have a shortcut for the color picker that I use all the time now you may decide you may be a heavy duty pendel users so you might not do that but you might use that approach for some other tool and go I don't really use this other one very much I'd rather use it for this purpose recognizing again that at any point of course you do have the option of switching everything back to the default settings but for now just to show you I'm going to hit except and click ok so that means in our same scenario I'm working up here in the top right hand corner I need the color picker I just press p and pops right up there to me, that's well worth the fact that I can't automatically get picked the pencil anymore because I'm going to use the color picker way more often than I am the mental again. If you're a big time mental user, don't do this you some other letter but that's kind of the thought process and again, as I mentioned before this wolf stay this way until you change it, but one of things we want to do is make sure that none of these things go away, so again, I could if I wished go back two keyboard shortcuts and just like I did for the other one save my own settings. They already have a couple of sets there that I've saved previously, so if you've gone to the effort of because frankly, creating keyboard shortcuts is a little more challenging than hiding menu items, so if you've gone to all the trouble, then I would suggest is probably not a bad idea to save your own set. If you're creative cloud member, one of the benefits of creative cloud as you can sink presets are these settings between a couple of machines, so if you spend all the time on your laptop creating all these shortcuts now you have a desktop machine theoretically, the next time you go to your desktop, it will ask, would you like to sink the settings that you did