All of the tools on the Toolbar can be accessed using a keyboard key and its worth learning at least some of them to speed up your work. The letters for selecting from the Toolbar can be seen by hovering the mouse pointer over the tool.
In addition, many of the tools have several variations (eg Regular, Polygonal and Magnetic Lasso) which means you may have to right click the icon before selecting. By pressing the [Shift] key and the appropriate letter, you can cycle around the variations, or easier still, if you set the correct option, then simply pressing the letter repeatedly will cycle around the tool variations. Find the option on Edit, Preferences, General, (or Ctrl K), and un-check Use Shift Key for Tool Switch.
| Spacebar | Scrolling hand | |
| Ctrl Spacebar | Zoom in | |
| Alt Spacebar | Zoom out | |
| Tab | Hide or reveal palettes | |
| Alt | Zoom in or out with a mouse wheel. | |
| D | Set foreground to black and background to white (Default) | Opposite for mask |
| X | Swap foreground and background colours | |
| 1 through 0 | Number keys change layer opacity 1 = 10% to 0 = 100% | (not with all tools!) |
| Ctrl | Temporary Move tool. | |
| Ctrl H | Hide marquee | |
| Ctrl D | Remove marquee | |
| Ctrl E | Merge layer down Shift | |
| Ctrl E | Merge all layers | |
| Ctrl J | Copy selection to new layer | |
| Ctrl T | Transform selection | |
| Backspace Del | Clear | |
| Ctrl Backspace | Fill with background colour | |
| Alt Backspace | Fill with foreground colour | |
| Shift Backspace | Show Fill Dialogue Panel | |
| [ | Reduce brush size | works on the fly |
| ] | Increase brush size | works on the fly |
| Shift [ | Reduce brush hardness (5 steps 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%) | works on the fly |
| Shift ] | Increase brush hardness (5 steps - 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% 100%) | works on the fly |
| The four shortcuts above work with the Brush, the Stamp, the Eraser, the Blur Tool and the Dodge Tool. | ||
| F1 | Help | |
| F4 | Paste clipboard to new layer | |
| F5 | Brushes - [Esc] to remove | |
| F12 | Revert to original image | |
| [Ctrl] [0] zero | Fit image on screen | |
| Double-click hand icon | Fit image on screen | |
Channels |
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| [Ctrl][1] | Red Channel | Use these when
looking for the most contrasty channel when making a selection with the Magic Wand |
| [Ctrl][2] | Green Channel | |
| [Ctrl][3] | Blue Channel | |
| [Shift][Ctrl][~] | RGB Channels | |
| [Ctrl] | Click saved selection channel thumbnail to load selection | |
| [Ctrl][F6] | Cycle round open images | only if more than one obviously |
Masks |
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| Double-click | Layer Mask Options Panel | |
| [Alt] Click | Load mask to screen - in place of image. | |
| [Ctrl] Click | Load mask as selection | |
| [Shift][Alt] Click | Load mask as red transparency with image | |