As you sit here, right now reading this, there most likely a keyboard full of characters sitting right in front of you. What do you use this for? Pecking out e-mails and IMs to friends and clients, typing out URLs you hear verbally? How about for key commands and shortcuts in your favorite programs and operating systems? I cannot tell you the amount of times I have looked over someone’s shoulder and watched them clumsily navigate drop-down menus searching for a function or option that is only a key stroke away from being used. Now I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to remember all the shortcuts for all the programs that are available and over multiple operating systems at that. But if you are a web design like me then there are a large handful that are quite useful and transpose over both Windows’ and Mac’s OS nicely.
First lets talk about those that don’t, namely special characters. What to do if you are mocking up something up in Photoshop or Illustrator and you need a bullet, or an actual apostrophe instead of an inch mark. Or even heaven forbid an accented letter or an umlaut. Look down at your keyboard, none of those characters are anywhere to be found. What to do? Do we need to start collecting foreign qwerty keys? Thankfully (maybe) both Apple and Microsoft have provided solutions for this quandary.
In Windows these are referred to as alt codes, hold down the alt key and type in a number code, release and violá, the special character appears. Alt codes for Windows
On a Mac these are but trickier as they can be a combination of option+(key) or option+shift+(key) and other combination. So here a listed resource is invaluable as I have never been able to retain more than a few of these. Special Character commands for Apple
Now for the shortcuts that make my life at work easier, the program specific. Namely Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Now beyond copy and paste there are a number of command I use on a daily basis. First let talk Photoshop, I will list just a few. (For mac user Crtl = Command/Apple and Alt = Command)
- Hitting Crtl which using any tool will switch to the direct select tool.
- Ctrl+Shift+< or > changes font size by 2
- Ctrl+Shift+Alt+< or > changes font size by 10
- Crtl+Alt+0 changes document view to actual pixels
- Ctrl+Alt+O open Adobe Bridge
- Crtl+Shift+I Inverse Selection
- Ctrl+Alt+D Feather selection
- Alt+Backspace background color fill
- Ctrl+Backspace Foreground color fill
- Ctrl+Alt+P Adobe print dialogue
- Ctrl+Spacebar Zoom In Tool
- Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar Zoom Out Tool
- Ctrl+; Show/Hide Guides
- Ctrl+’ Show/Hide Grid
- Ctrl+H Show/Hide Guides, Slices, Grid, Selection
- Ctrl+Alt+Z Steps backwards through history
- Ctrl+Shift+Z Steps forward through history
For the rest, Adobe provides great documentation of every command that is possible, which Trevor Morris was nice enough to break out by version and operating system. Check it out.
Now a large number of the commands that work in Photoshop will work across all Adobe programs. But there are also a number of Illustrator specific ones that I could not imagine working without.
- Hitting Ctrl while using the pen tool (P) or any tool really will switch the cursor to the last select arrow used.
- Hitting Alt while using the pen tool (P) will switch the cursor to the Convert Anchor Point Tool
- Hitting Ctrl while using the Direct Select Tool will change it to the Group Select Tool
- Ctrl+1 re-size document to actual size
- Crtl+0 re-size document to fit in window
- Ctrl+Shift+O Change fonts to outlines
For more you can find a complete list for CS3 here. I hope you have found this information as useful as I do, happy clicking.
