Keyboard Shortcuts

The mouse is a wonderful thing (I'm not referring to the squeaky kind that likes cheese), but it can be inefficient for many tasks. For example, to choose the Print command so that you can print your document, you would move the mouse to the File menu, and then scan down the list of items and choose Print. Printing can be something you do quite often, and having to navigate back to that File menu each time can be time-consuming.

The good news is that there are keyboard shortcutsor keys you can press on your keyboard to perform specific tasks or functionsthat can save a whole lot of time. In the example I gave previously, simply pressing Command+P (Ctrl+P) invokes the Print command. In fact, there are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for many different tasks. Power users take advantage of keyboard shortcuts to execute tasks quickly. Keyboard shortcuts can even be used to switch between different tools, enabling you to focus more clearly on the work at hand. You'll find that as you become more adept at using keyboard shortcuts, switching between tools and performing certain functions will become second naturealmost to the point that you won't be consciously aware that you are doing it.

By the Way

It's easy to find out what the keyboard shortcut is for a function or a tool. Menu items have the keyboard shortcut listed to the right (see Figure 4.37), and tools list their shortcut in the ToolTip (see Figure 4.38).

Figure 4.37. Keyboard shortcuts indicated in the File menu of Illustrator CS2.

Figure 4.38. Keyboard shortcuts indicated in the toolbox of Photoshop CS2.

Now, obviously, if you consider that each program can have a ton of keyboard shortcuts and there are several applications in the suite, that's a lot of shortcuts to try to learn and remember. It's no coincidence, then, that most of the keyboard shortcuts are consistent across the suite applications. This means that you can press the P key in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign and expect to get the Pen tool.

Clearly, learning even one of the applications in the suite gives you a head start on learning all the others. Even if you've never used InDesign, simply being familiar with Illustrator or Photoshop serves as an introductory course to using these other tools.

But there's more….

Make Your Own Shortcuts

Adobe realizes that its users are unique and that just about every designer wants a keyboard shortcut assigned to the feature or tool that he personally uses most often. At the same time, there are several hundred menu items, tools, and functions in each application, and there are a limited number of possible key combinations you can use on your keyboard. Above that, certain key commands are reserved for use by functions outside the applications. For example, Command+Tab (Ctrl+Tab) is a shortcut used by the operating system (both Windows XP and Mac OS X) to switch between open applications.

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive all enable you to customize keyboard shortcuts. That means you can decide to assign your own shortcuts to functions or tools that you use most often.

By the Way

It's important to point out that there are certain keyboard shortcuts that are not consistent among the applications, and there are usually good reasons for this. For example, Command+F (Ctrl+F) in InDesign is the shortcut to bring up the Find and Replace dialog box. However, in Illustrator, that same shortcut is used for the Paste in Front command. This is because Find and Replace is something that might be used quite often in InDesign, but not nearly as often in Illustrator. At the same time, Illustrator users might use Paste in Front all the time. Of course, customizable shortcuts now let you make all of these decisions on your own.

Customizable keyboard shortcuts is one of those cross-product features that hasn't been "sweetened" yet (sorry, couldn't resist the pun), in that the implementation is slightly different depending on which application you're in (see Figure 4.39).

Figure 4.39. The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box for each of the suite applications.

From Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, choose Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts. In GoLive, choose Keyboard Shortcuts from the GoLive menu (on the Mac). The interfaces are somewhat different, but the concept is the same. You can change or assign keyboard shortcuts to any tool, any menu item, and some palette fly-out menus as well. If you try to assign a shortcut that already exists (say, for another tool or function), you'll get a warning telling you so, with the option to keep the older assignment or to adopt the new one you just defined (see Figure 4.40).

Figure 4.40. A warning in Illustrator CS2 indicating that a key combination that you've assigned already exists.

Most important of all, you have the capability to save your custom keyboard shortcut settings as an external file. This means you can secretly change all the keyboard shortcuts on your co-worker's computerum, I mean, you can easily distribute custom sets to co-workers or take your own sets with you if you regularly work on different computers or share a different computer with others.