Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Accessing Commands
You can access commands equally well from menus or from the keyboard.
Beginners tend to use the menus a lot while they are learning the commands, and
that is perfectly natural. Intermediate-level Photoshop users tend to increasingly
use default keyboard shortcuts as they memorize more of them, while pros tend to
make their own keyboard shortcuts to work more efficiently. Photoshop's default
preferences are loaded with a set of keyboard shortcuts, and there is generally
no reason to change them because they are well thought out as a cohesive system.
However, in the following steps you will make two new keyboard shortcuts.
Certification
Objective
1.
Open the Image menu and examine some of the commands listed
there. In particular notice that the commonly used commands Crop
and Trim (see Chapter 3) do not have keyboard shortcuts assigned to
them by default.
2.
Choose Edit a Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down and expand the
Image menu item by clicking its disclosure triangle. Keep scrolling
down until you locate Crop and Trim.
Menu items often
have cascading
submenus indicated
by black disclosure
triangles.
3.
Select the shortcut field next to the Crop command. Press
Opt+Shift+Cmd+X and click Accept.
m
o d i f i e r
K
e y s
, a
B B r e v i aT i o n s
,
a n d
s
y m B o l s
Typewriters have one modifier key, Shift, which computers obviously inherited.
Windows has three additional modifier keys: Control (Ctrl), Alternate (Alt), and
the Windows key. However, the Windows key can't be used within Photoshop.
Mac OS has three modifier keys in addition to Shift, which are Command (
.
),
Option (Opt), and Control. Mac Command (
.
) is equivalent to Windows Ctrl.
One way to remember this is to think of commanders controlling their troops.
Modern Mac keyboards have the words Option and Alt printed on the same
key, illustrating their equivalence.
What makes this confusing is that Windows and Mac OS both have Control keys
but they are not equivalent because Windows Ctrl = Mac OS Command (
.
).
Mac OS's Control key is not used in Photoshop's default set of keyboard
shortcuts but it can be assigned to custom shortcuts.
(continues)
