Sahlin Studio | Digital Scrapbooking Designs

Favorite Photoshop Shortcuts

Everyone has their favorite Photoshop shortcuts, and when I asked the Sahlin Studio creative team for their favorites, we came up with quite a list! And we all learned something new! Although not even close to exhaustive, I hope this list of our favorite Photoshop shortcuts teaches you a new trick or two.

Favorite Photoshop Shortcuts

Some of the Shortcuts links to a tutorial for this shortcut.
Ctrl + U = bring up Hue/Saturation dialog box
Ctrl + D = deselect the marching ants
Ctrl + Z = magic UNDO button
Ctrl + N = new blank file (shortcut to File>New dialog)
Ctrl + J = duplicate layer (can also select a portion of a layer with the Marquee tool and use Ctrl+J to duplicate only the selected area)
Ctrl + E = flatten to layer below
Ctrl + O = open (shortcut to File>Open dialog); You can also double-click in Photoshop outside of any open documents (in the gray area) to bring up the Open dialog.
Ctrl + 0 = Zoom out so entire canvas is visible (for example, if you’re zoomed in working on a small area of a 12×12 canvas, pressing Ctrl+0 would zoom out to view the whole 12×12 page in the window)
Ctrl + + or – = Zoom in or out

Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E = combine all layers into a new layer on top of existing layers (instead of flattening or merging all)

Ctrl + Alt + G = clip to layer below
Ctrl + Shift + [ or ] = move layer to top or bottom
Ctrl + [ or ] = move layer up or down one level
Shift + Ctrl + N = create new layer
Ctrl + Shift + Backspace = Fill a layer with background color (Tip from Becca1976: “I use this a lot when customizing my shadows.”)
Tab = hide/show all palettes
V = Move tool
T = Text tool
B = Brush tool
M = Marquee tool
[ and ] = adjust brush size when using the Brush tool

For easy reference, here is a compiled list of them all on a card that you can print out and keep by your computer (click on the image to 100%, then right-click and save image). Most of these shortcuts will work with Elements, too.
photoshop shortcuts control keys

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What’s your favorite Photoshop or Photoshop Elements shortcut?

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