A List of Photoshop Shortcuts Every Designer should Know

Being a good designer is more than just pumping out something that looks nice, you also have to be quick about it. Learning your shortcuts is the best way to be quick in Photoshop, or any other program for that matter and is essential for you to be good designer. It’s not a guarantee that you will be a good designer, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Below, I have listed some important short cut, key commands that every designer should know. The top one is the Mac version, and the bottom one is the PC version. These will help you with the basic functions, as well as functions that designers use on a daily basis. Lets check them out.

General Commands

Create a new document

apple + n
control + n

These are commands everyone should know, and is universal for pretty much every program, not just Photoshop.

Copy, Paste, Cut

apple + c, apple + v, apple + x
control + c, control + v, control + x

This is another one of those generic key commands, also important.

Save, Save for web

apple + s, apple + option + shift + s
control + s, control + alt + shift + s

Along with your copy, cut and paste this should be one of the first ones you memorize. This is obviously an important one, and like copy, cut and paste the regular save is generic for most programs.

Open, Close, Quit

apple + o, apple + w, apple + q
control + o, control + w, control + q

A few more generic commands, it’s a lot easier than going into the drop down menus.

Undo, Step backwards

Apple + z Apple + shift + z
control + z control + shift + z

The difference between undo and step backwards is that undo only goes back once, where step backwards goes back to an amount of times determined in your preferences.

Layer Commands

Duplicate a layer

apple + j
control + j

This command, duplicates the selected layer, also it can duplicate a selection of a layer extracting just the parts you need.

Create a new layer

apple + shift + n
control + shift + n

You can always just click on the new layer button on the layers panel, but this is a lot easier once you remember it.

Moving layers up, down, top, bottom

apple + ], apple + [, apple + shift + ], apple + shift + [
control + ], control + [,control + shift + ], control + shift + [

This is really helpful if you have a document with a lot of layers, and makes for quick moving.

Merge linked, merge visible

apple + e, apple + shift + e
control + e, control + control + e

Merge your linked layers into one layer or group all your visible layers together. This saves space and cuts down on your layers.

Toolbar

W = magic wand
V = pointer
P = pen tool
M = marquee tool
L = lasso
B = brush tool
E = erase tool
D = resets colors to black and white
X = switches between foreground and background
Q = quick mask

It may seem easy enough to just click on the toolbar, but once you start using these, you will notice how much easier it is to not have to. NOTE: These don't work while you are using a text box.

Fill with foreground color

Option + delete
Alt + delete

Fill with background color

Apple + delete
Control + delete

Soften/harden brush

Shift + [, Shift + [
Shift + [, Shift + [

Brush size

[, ]
[, ]

These will quicken you work, especially when you are doing a lot of work with brushes.

Adjustments

Color balance

Apple + B
control + B

Curves

Apple + M
control + M

Hue/Saturation

Apple + U
control + U

Levels

Apple + L
control + L

Inverse Selection

Apple + shift + I
control + shift + I

This makes life easier, instead of having to go into image>adjustments every time you need something from there you can just use the key commands.

Other Drop-down menu items

Free transform

Apple + T
Control + T

Change the size of your image, stretch, enlarge and shrink with a simple key command.

Last filter

Apple + F
Control + F

Repeat the last filter you used with this command.

Hide/Show Ruler

Apple + R
Control + R

Hide/Show Guides

Apple + ;
Control + ;

Hide/Show Grid

Apple + ‘
Control + ‘

Custom Shortcuts

If you are comfortable with your knowledge of shortcuts, then you can add more by going into your preferences (apple+ option + shift + k). Depending on what you do, this can be a great way to speed up your process. For example, I use my color modes and image sizes a lot so I have created shortcuts for those!
.Thanks to http://www.denisdesigns.com

Tools with Short Cuts to Access it

Convert Color Images to Gray Images Using Programming

How to convert Color Images to Gray Images

There are some techniques to do this, and below is the one of them:

To convert color image to gray image convert all pixels like this pseudo code:


PIXEL clr;
COLOR old,new;

FOR ALL clr in image DO
BEGIN
old = clr.color;
new.red = 0.5 * old.red + 0.3 * old.green + 0.2 * old.blue;
new.green = 0.5 * old.red + 0.3 * old.green + 0.2 * old.blue;
new.blue = 0.5 * old.red + 0.3 * old.green + 0.2 * old.blue;
clr.color = new;
END


How to Create Mirror Reflection with Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to make a reflection with your Photoshop. I used Adobe Photoshop CS2 when creating this tutorial, but I guess it does not make any difference even if you do it with Photoshop.

Thank You very much http://www.dphotojournal.com/ for this tutorial.

Picture used on this tutorial is Australian Parliament House in Canberra, by Free-StockPhotos.com

Step1: Open your image, copy your background layer, and fill your background layer with white

Step2: After you open your image, go to image>canvas size and lock the anchor at top centre, type in a new figure for height. Mine is 600 pixels.

Step3. Right click on image layer in your layer palette, and duplicate your image layer

Step4. Click on your new layer then edit>transform>flip vertical

Step5. Position it very carefully so it looks most like a reflection of the building as shown on this image below. You can shunt it up and down with the arrow keys to get its position pixels-perfect.

Step6. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. We’re looking to create the softening, stretching effect characteristic of reflections in large, slightly rippling bodies of water.

Step7. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. No we need direction of the blur to be at right-angles to the Horizon, so set Angle to 90 degrees and move the Distance bar, experimenting with various values until you like what you see in the previews.

Step8. Go to Filter>Distort>Ripple. By moving the slider we can select the degree of wave movement on the surface of our lake. Aim to create the effect of a light breeze, so keep the waves Medium sized and don’t go overboard on the amount of ripple.

Step9. Change the perspective a bit by edit>transform>perspective

The reason of doing this is that Real water has an effect on an object’s perspective. Reflections tend to spread slightly when they hit the water, so we’ll try and recreate this in our Parliament image.

Step10. Let’s apply some more motion blur to make that water look even more realistic, but this time, we’ll make it parallel to the horizon. Again, be subtle to make it as effective as possible.

Step11. Now we’re going to boost the blues by adjusting the appropriate slider in the color balance window (image>adjustments>color balance)

You’re done!

Here’s my final image: