The Suite Spot

Single Key Accelerators in Photoshop

Discovering the keys on your keyboard that activate a particular tool is pretty straightforward – simply hover over the tool in the toolbox and you’ll see it in the tooltip that appears or when you click and hold on a nested toolset (like the marquee tools, for example) you’ll actually see the letter there.

Some tools have the same shortcut, and you can cycle between them by adding the shift key (you can turn that behaviour – the need for the shift key – on and off in the preferences).

Here are some of the shortcuts along with some suggestions for how you might remember those that aren’t so obvious; those that are followed by a letter I or Id mean that the shortcut is exactly the same in Illustrator or InDesign (some will also work in other products – see for yourself!)

• V – the Move Tool; perhaps you could think of this as being a pointer, like the system’s own arrow. I Id
• A – the Direct Selection Tool or Path Selection Tool; you could think “Actually I want to select the path or this point on the path.” I Id
• W – the Quick Selection Tool or Magic Wand Tool.
• M – the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee Tools.
• I – the Eyedropper Tool. I Id
• B – the Brush Tool, Pencil Tool and Colour Replacement Tool (all brushes of sorts). I
• P – the Pen Tool. I Id
• R – the Rotate Tool
• E – the Eraser Tools (including the Background and Magic variants).
• G – the Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool; you could perhaps think “Get this filled with a gradient, colour or pattern.” (I Id – Gradient tool only).
• T – the Type Tool. I Id
• O – the Dodge, Burn and Sponge Tools; if you’re used to a traditional darkroom you could perhaps think of the O as the end of the “lollipop” for dodging, the shape made by your hand for burning, and a sponge looks a bit like an O I suppose… otherwise perhaps you could think Overexpose as a starting point?
• U – the vector tools including the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line and Custom Shape; how about “You want to use a vector in Photoshop?”…
• Y – the History Brush and Art History Brush; I must confess that my own way of remembering this is “Why would anyone use the Art History Brush ordinarily” (but that’s just me).
• J – the healing tools (Spot, Healing, Patch, Red-eye); perhaps “Just clear that up, and it’ll look great.”

Of course, I welcome your own suggestions!

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