shortcuts

The New dekeKeys: Enhanced Keyboard Shortcuts for Photoshop CS5

Submitted by deke on 18 May 2010 - 9:15pm.

As many of you know, I'm in the process of developing and releasing my Photoshop CS5 One-on-One tutorials, which have for years ranked among the #1 book and video resources on Photoshop. My exhaustive Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals video course went live on the lynda.com Online Training Library early this month. My book, Adobe Photoshop CS5 One-on-One, is nearly complete. And I'll release the Advanced and Mastery video courses in the coming months.

Whether book or video, my One-on-One courses begin by urging you to load a collection of custom keyboard shortcuts called dekeKeys. The reason: You can work inside Photoshop more quickly and fluidly if you can access the most essential commands by pressing a few keys, as opposed to wasting precious (not to mention tedious) time hunting through menus. With dekeKeys, you can work as fast as you can think.

dekeKeys: Enhanced Shortcuts for Photoshop CS5

Today I make these keyboard shortcuts available for free to members of dekeOnline. (If you're not yet a member, it costs nothing and it's easy. Just click here to get started.) Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #4: Navigation

Submitted by deke on 23 March 2010 - 12:15am.
Feature #4: Navigation

You never forget your first voyage into the great seas of graphics navigation. Mine was in 1985. I was using MacPaint, my supposed (but entirely fictional) mastery of which helped me land my first design job. I was panning an image using the scroll bars and a coworker, horrified by my behavior, showed me a trick: Hold down the Option key to get what he called "Muffy." While I found it troubling that he'd invented a pet name for something that looked and worked like a hand---did he have a nickname for his actual hand?---I had to admit, I was amazed. It had never occurred to me that such a tool (otherwise unavailable in the software) so much as existed, let alone might save me so much effort.

In creating Photoshop, Adobe "borrowed" the hand tool. But it assigned a different shortcut: the spacebar. Which just so happens to be the biggest key on the keyboard. It's as if Adobe was saying, this tool needs a shortcut more than all the others. And I couldn't agree more. Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #37: The Fill Functions

Submitted by deke on 4 August 2009 - 12:35am.
Feature #37: The Fill Functions

Welcome to the fourth installment of Photoshop Top 40, my classically arranged, reverse-order countdown--from #40 to #1--of the best features in all of Adobe Photoshop. As you have no doubt discerned by now, a single "feature" may comprise a collection of featurettes. As is the case this week with Feature #37: "The Fill Functions." Read more » 

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dekeKeys for Download

Submitted by deke on 16 September 2008 - 2:28am.

Ever since the dawn of my One-on-One book and video series nearly five years ago, I've been nurturing two collections of custom keyboard shortcuts that I call dekeKeys. One is for Photoshop, the other is for InDesign. (For some reason, I haven't been quite motivated to do one for Illustrator. Maybe when my book comes out early next year.)dekeKeys

Both shortcut sets grew out of a need, not to help you (c'mon, I love you, you know that), but to expedite my personal workflow. It started with Photoshop: Ctrl+Alt+I (on the Mac, Cmd-Opt-I) for Image Size and Ctrl+Alt+C (Cmd-Opt-C) for Canvas Size. I later talked Adobe into integrating those two as defaults, so no need to customize them. But I've come up with lots more custom shortcuts since, all of which make my life much easier at any rate. Read more » 

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101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes

Submitted by deke on 21 May 2008 - 7:16pm.
Deke celebrates Tip #101

dekePod Pilot #2: After just one Pilot episode and two years of darkness (during which I was romancing my sponsors, not just sitting on my hands, BTW), dekePod is back and with a vengeance. We're calling this one Pilot #2, to be followed by regular episodes once every other week, assuming we don't all kill ourselves. (These things are massively time-consuming.) Here's the official marketing description: Read more » 

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