Photoshop CS Timesaving Techniques For Dummies [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Defining Custom Shortcuts

Creating your own shortcuts is easy. You have to keep some things in mind, though, when creating shortcuts. Photoshop lets you come up with almost any keystroke combination that you can think of, but there are a few rules:

Single letter keystrokes such as M or B can be assigned only to tools in the Toolbox.

Single digits, such as 1 or 9, cannot be used for shortcuts.

You can use any combination of the Shift, Ctrl/z, or Alt/Option keys with a letter or number. For instance, you could use Shift+8 or Ctrl+Shift+K/z +Shift+K for shortcuts.

Any of the function keys can be used on their own or in combination with the Shift, Ctrl/z, or Alt/Option keys.

Any shortcuts assigned by Photoshop to permanent features, such as palettes, cannot be used. For instance, Ctrl+1/z +1 is assigned as a shortcut to access the first channel in the Channels palette. You cannot reassign this shortcut.

That said, you can come up with plenty of other combinations. If any shortcuts conflict (a shortcut is in use somewhere else or you create an impossible combination), don’t worry! Photoshop tells you what’s wrong.

To create your own custom shortcuts, follow these steps:

Choose Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts or press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+K/Shift+z +Option+K on the keyboard. (You can use your toes if you need to.)

The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box shown in Figure 3-1 opens, displaying the currently selected shortcut set.




Figure 3-1: The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box opens showing the loaded shortcut set.






Locate the menu item or tool to which you want to add the shortcut.





Use the Shortcuts For drop-down list to select the location of the item to which you want to add the shortcuts.

You can choose from:





Application Menus: These are the commands found on the Menu bar at the top of the program window.





Palette Menus: These are the commands available with each palette.





Tools: These are the tools in the Toolbox.







Select the menu command or tool to which you want to add the custom shortcut.

If you selected Application Menus or Palette Menus in Step 3, then you need to click the tiny arrow next to a menu or palette category to view the available commands, as shown in Figure 3-2.




Figure 3-2: Click the tiny arrow to access the commands in a menu or palette.






Enter a custom shortcut in the text box.

Just enter the combination you want to use in the text box, such as Ctrl+O/z +O. If there’s a conflict or problem, Photoshop tells you as shown in Figure 3-3.





Figure 3-3: If you try to assign a custom shortcut that is unacceptable or creates a conflict, Photoshop tells you.






Accept or cancel the shortcut:

If the shortcut does not create any conflicts, click Accept to add the shortcut.

If the shortcut creates a conflict and you don’t want to use it, click either Undo or Undo Changes.

If the shortcut creates a conflict and you still want to accept it, you can either click Accept to add the change and not view the command that created the conflict or click Accept and Go To Conflict to add the change and view the command that created the conflict.







Tip

When you add a custom shortcut, you may notice that (modified) is appended to the currently selected shortcut set name. Any custom shortcuts you create are automatically saved with the currently selected set unless you save them in their own shortcut set.