10 Custom Keyboard Shortcuts You Need to Be Using in Photoshop

2. Convert to Smart Objects and Edit Contents

Smart Objects are probably the most important element of a non-destructive workflow in Photoshop, but strangely there is no default shortcut assigned to them. I like to use two shortcuts with Smart Objects, one for converting layers into them and one to edit their contents. For editing a Smart Object’s contents you can also double click on the layer’s thumbnail, but that also takes time. Around 1 second each time you do it, but if you have to do that around 100 times a day that means you have wasted 2 minutes. That is 10 minutes a week and around 10 hours a year. One simple custom shortcut can save you a whole working day a year.

---

3. Adjustments and Properties Panels

The process of showing and hiding panels can also be assigned keyboard shortcuts. I prefer to use the function keys for this as they can be used without having to hold down Command/Ctrl together with them. I have custom shortcuts assigned to these two panels as they are the ones I always want to see or hide. I don’t like having them always visible because they take up quite a lot of real estate on the screen.

---

4. Arrange: Tile and Consolidate All to Tabs

These two options can be found under the Window Menu – Arrange command group. With these commands, you will be able to quickly switch between seeing all your open documents in a grid and seeing only one of them open, with the others all collapsed into tabs. Unfortunately, with this feature you won’t be able to use the same shortcut to switch back and forth, you will have to assign two different shortcuts. You can always make them similar to each other to make it easier to switch between the two modes.

---

5. Camera Raw Filter

The Camera Raw filter makes it possible to use all the features of the Camera Raw plug-in directly in any of your layers in Photoshop. You can even use them completely non-destructively as Smart Filters if you apply them to a Smart Object.

This new filter was introduced in Photoshop CC and it came with no default keyboard shortcuts. I love to work with Camera Raw adjustments so I immediately assigned a shortcut to it and it saves me a lot of time. This filter can only be used in RGB mode but there is a trick that will allow you to use it in a CMYK document. If the Smart Object’s source is set to RGB, the main document can still be in CMYK color mode.

---

6. Convert to Paragraph/Point Text

There are two ways to create separate, fully editable Type layers in Photoshop. If you just click with the Type Tool anywhere on the canvas you will create a Point Type Layer, which won’t automatically break the lines of your text. For automatic line-break you will need to create a Paragraph Type Layer, for which you need to click and drag with the Type Tool on the canvas to define an area for the paragraph. In the type menu, you will find a feature that can convert these two types to one another.

---

7. Deselect All Layers

In some cases you might want to make sure that you don’t have any layers selected in Photoshop. For that, there is no default keyboard shortcut, but there is a feature under the Select Menu called Deselect Layers. I like to use Command/Ctrl + Shift + A for this, that keyboard shortcut performs the same task in InDesign by default.

---

8. Share on Behance

Behance is a great addition to the Creative Cloud set of services. Once you have an account you can link that to Photoshop and save any of your work directly from Photoshop into your portfolio on Behance. I use this option frequently so I decided to set up a custom shortcut for it, which is similar to saving the file to the desktop (Command/Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S). You can upload your work-in-progress to Behance, as well, and re-upload it at every stage. This will make the whole revision process much faster between you and your client.

---

9. Show/Hide All Effects

In documents where you have several layers with Layer Styles it might be difficult to quickly check the effect of all the Layer Styles used in the document. With the Show/Hide All Effects command from the Layer menu you can do this easily but it can be even faster by assigning a custom keyboard shortcut to it.

---

10. Mixer Brush Tool

Last but not least, it is worth mentioning that the Mixer Brush deserves its own unique custom keyboard shortcut. This tool is mainly used together with the Brush Tool, which is set B by default. So why not assign N to the Mixer Brush, which is directly next to B on the keyboard? N by default is assigned to a 3D Tool, but that tool is used much less than the Mixer Brush Tool, which can beautifully merge different colors together and can even reduce the noise of your photos.

---

Additional Reading

For more information about setting custom keyboard shortcuts, take a look at the following URLs.

• Universal Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Photoshop’s Default Keyboard Shortcuts