19 April 2020

Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps


Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as the task, game, or discussion at hand.

The most buzzy of these startups is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together. You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what interests you. High-energy rooms attract crowds while slower ones see participants slip out to join other chat circles.

Clubhouse blew up this weekend on VC Twitter as people scrambled for exclusive invites, humblebragged about their membership, or made fun of everyone’s FOMO. For now, there’s no public app or access. The name Clubhouse perfectly captures how people long to be part of the in-crowd.

Clubhouse was built by Paul Davison, who previously founded serendipitous offline people-meeting location app Highlight and reveal-your-whole-camera-roll app Shorts before his team was acquired by Pinterest in 2016. This year he debuted his Alpha Exploration Co startup studio and launched Talkshow for instantly broadcasting radio-style call-in shows. Spontaneity is the thread that ties Davison’s work together, whether its for making new friends, sharing your life, transmitting your thoughts, or having a discussion.

It’s very early days for Clubhouse. It doesn’t even have a website. There’s no telling exactly what it will be like if or when it officially launches, and Davison and his co-founder Rohan Seth declined to comment. But the positive reception shows a desire for a more immediate, multi-media approach to discussion that updates what Twitter did with text.

Sheltered From Surprise

What quarantine has revealed is that when you separate everyone, spontaneity is a big thing you miss. In your office, that could be having a random watercooler chat with a co-worker or commenting aloud about something funny you found on the internet. At a party, it could be wandering up to chat with group of people because you know one of them or overhear something interesting. That’s lacking while we’re stuck home since we’ve stigmatized randomly phoning a friend, differing to asynchronous text despite its lack of urgency.

Clubhouse founder Paul Davison. Image Credit: JD Lasica

Scheduled Zoom calls, utilitarian Slack threads, and endless email chains don’t capture the thrill of surprise or the joy of conversation that giddily revs up as people riff off each other’s ideas. But smart app developers are also realizing that spontaneity doesn’t mean constantly interrupting people’s life or workflow. They give people the power to decide when they are or aren’t available or signal that they’re not to be disturbed so they’re only thrust into social connection when they want it.

Houseparty chart ranks via AppAnnie

Houseparty embodies this spontaneity. It’s become the breakout hit of quarantine by letting people on a whim join group video chat rooms with friends the second they open the app. It saw 50 million downloads in a month, up 70X over its pre-COVID levels in some places. It’s become the #1 social app in 82 countries including the US, and #1 overall in 16 countries.

Originally built for gaming, Discord lets communities spontaneously connect through persistent video, voice, and chat rooms. It’s seen a 50% increase in US daily voice users with spikes in shelter-in-place early adopter states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Washington. Bunch, for video chat overlayed on mobile gaming, is also climbing the charts and going mainstream with its user base shifting to become majority female as they talk for 1.5 million minutes per day. Both apps make it easy to join up with pals and pick something to play together.

The Impromptu Office

Enterprise video chat tools are adapting to spontaneity as an alternative to heavy-handed, pre-meditated Zoom calls. There’s been a backlash as people realize they don’t get anything done by scheduling back-to-back video chats all day.

  • Loom lets you quickly record and send a video clip to co-workers that they can watch at their leisure, with back-and-forth conversation sped up because videos are uploaded as they’re shot.
  • Around overlays small circular video windows atop your screen so you can instantly communicate with colleagues while most of your desktop stays focused on your actual work.
  • Screen exists as a tiny widget that can launch a collaborative screenshare where everyone gets a cursor to control the shared window so they can improvisationally code, design, write, and annotate.

Screen

  • Pragli is an avatar-based virtual office where you can see if someone’s in a calendar meeting, away, or in flow listening to music so you know when to instantly open a voice or video chat channel together without having to purposefully find a time everyone’s free. But instead of following you home like Slack, Pragli lets you sign in and out of the virtual office to start and end your day.

Raising Our Voice

While visual communication has been the breakout feature of our mobile phones by allowing us to show where we are, shelter-in-place means we don’t have much to show. That’s expanded the opportunity for tools that take a less-is-more approach to spontaneous communication. Whether for remote partying or rapid problem solving, new apps beyond Clubhouse are incorporating voice rather than just video. Voice offers a way to rapidly exchange information and feel present together without dominating our workspace or attention, or forcing people into an uncomfortable spotlight.

High Fidelity is Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale’s $72 million-funded current startup. After recently pivoting away from building a virtual reality co-working tool, High Fidelity has begun testing a voice and headphones-based online event platform and gathering place. The early beta lets users move their dot around a map and hear the voice of anyone close to them with spatial audio so voices get louder as you get closer to someone, and shift between your ears as you move past them. You can spontaneously approach and depart little clusters of dots to explore different conversations within earshot.

An unofficial mockup of High Fidelity’s early tests. Image Credits: DigitalGlobe (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

High Fidelity is currently using a satellite photo of Burning Man as its test map. It allows DJs to set up in different corners, and listeners to stroll between them or walk off with a friend to chat, similar to the real offline event. Since Burning Man was cancelled this year, High Fidelity could potentially be a candidate for holding the scheduled virtual version the organizers have promised.

Houseparty’s former CEO Ben Rubin and Skype GM of engineering Brian Meek are building a spontaneous teamwork tool called Slashtalk. Rubin sold Houseparty to Fortnite-maker Epic in mid-2019, but the gaming giant largely neglected the app until its recent quarantine-driven success. Rubin left.

His new startup’s site explains that “/talk is an anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralized conversations. We believe most meetings can be eliminated if the right people are connected at the right time to discuss the right topics, for just as long as necessary.” It lets people quickly jump into a voice or video chat to get something sorted without delaying until a calendared collab session.

Slashtalk co-founder Ben Rubin at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015

Whether for work or play, these spontaneous apps can conjure times from our more unstructured youth. Whether sifting through the cafeteria or school yard, seeing who else is at the mall, walking through halls of open doors in college dorms, or hanging at the student union or campus square, the pre-adult years offer many opportunities for impromptu social interation.

As we age and move into our separate homes, we literally erect walls that limit our ability to perceive the social cues that signal that someone’s available for unprompted communication. That’s spawned apps like Down To Lunch and Snapchat acquisition Zenly, and Facebook’s upcoming Messenger status feature designed to break through those barriers and make it feel less desperate to ask someone to hang out offline.

But while socializing or collaborating IRL requires transportation logistics and usually a plan, the new social apps discussed here bring us together instantly, thereby eliminating the need to schedule togetherness ahead of time. Gone too are the geographic limits restraining you to connect only with those within a reasonable commute. Digitally, you can pick from your whole network. And quarantines have further opened our options by emptying parts of our calendars.

Absent those frictions, what shines through is our intention. We can connect with who we want and accomplish what we want. Spontaneous apps open the channel so our impulsive human nature can shine through.


Read Full Article

Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps


Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as the task, game, or discussion at hand.

The most buzzy of these startups is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together. You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what interests you. High-energy rooms attract crowds while slower ones see participants slip out to join other chat circles.

Clubhouse blew up this weekend on VC Twitter as people scrambled for exclusive invites, humblebragged about their membership, or made fun of everyone’s FOMO. For now, there’s no public app or access. The name Clubhouse perfectly captures how people long to be part of the in-crowd.

Clubhouse was built by Paul Davison, who previously founded serendipitous offline people-meeting location app Highlight and reveal-your-whole-camera-roll app Shorts before his team was acquired by Pinterest in 2016. This year he debuted his Alpha Exploration Co startup studio and launched Talkshow for instantly broadcasting radio-style call-in shows. Spontaneity is the thread that ties Davison’s work together, whether its for making new friends, sharing your life, transmitting your thoughts, or having a discussion.

It’s very early days for Clubhouse. It doesn’t even have a website. There’s no telling exactly what it will be like if or when it officially launches, and Davison declined to comment. But the positive reception shows a desire for a more immediate, multi-media approach to discussion that updates what Twitter did with text.

Sheltered From Surprise

What quarantine has revealed is that when you separate everyone, spontaneity is a big thing you miss. In your office, that could be having a random watercooler chat with a co-worker or commenting aloud about something funny you found on the internet. At a party, it could be wandering up to chat with group of people because you know one of them or overhear something interesting. That’s lacking while we’re stuck home since we’ve stigmatized randomly phoning a friend, differing to asynchronous text despite its lack of urgency.

Clubhouse founder Paul Davison. Image Credit: JD Lasica

Scheduled Zoom calls, utilitarian Slack threads, and endless email chains don’t capture the thrill of surprise or the joy of conversation that giddily revs up as people riff off each other’s ideas. But smart app developers are also realizing that spontaneity doesn’t mean constantly interrupting people’s life or workflow. They give people the power to decide when they are or aren’t available or signal that they’re not to be disturbed so they’re only thrust into social connection when they want it.

Houseparty chart ranks via AppAnnie

Houseparty embodies this spontaneity. It’s become the breakout hit of quarantine by letting people on a whim join group video chat rooms with friends the second they open the app. It saw 50 million downloads in a month, up 70X over its pre-COVID levels in some places. It’s become the #1 social app in 82 countries including the US, and #1 overall in 16 countries.

Originally built for gaming, Discord lets communities spontaneously connect through persistent video, voice, and chat rooms. It’s seen a 50% increase in US daily voice users with spikes in shelter-in-place early adopter states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Washington. Bunch, for video chat overlayed on mobile gaming, is also climbing the charts and going mainstream with its user base shifting to become majority female as they talk for 1.5 million minutes per day. Both apps make it easy to join up with pals and pick something to play together.

The Impromptu Office

Enterprise video chat tools are adapting to spontaneity as an alternative to heavy-handed, pre-meditated Zoom calls. There’s been a backlash as people realize they don’t get anything done by scheduling back-to-back video chats all day.

  • Loom lets you quickly record and send a video clip to co-workers that they can watch at their leisure, with back-and-forth conversation sped up because videos are uploaded as they’re shot.
  • Around overlays small circular video windows atop your screen so you can instantly communicate with colleagues while most of your desktop stays focused on your actual work.
  • Screen exists as a tiny widget that can launch a collaborative screenshare where everyone gets a cursor to control the shared window so they can improvisationally code, design, write, and annotate.

Screen

  • Pragli is an avatar-based virtual office where you can see if someone’s in a calendar meeting, away, or in flow listening to music so you know when to instantly open a voice or video chat channel together without having to purposefully find a time everyone’s free. But instead of following you home like Slack, Pragli lets you sign in and out of the virtual office to start and end your day.

Raising Our Voice

While visual communication has been the breakout feature of our mobile phones by allowing us to show where we are, shelter-in-place means we don’t have much to show. That’s expanded the opportunity for tools that take a less-is-more approach to spontaneous communication. Whether for remote partying or rapid problem solving, new apps beyond Clubhouse are incorporating voice rather than just video. Voice offers a way to rapidly exchange information and feel present together without dominating our workspace or attention, or forcing people into an uncomfortable spotlight.

High Fidelity is Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale’s $72 million-funded current startup. After recently pivoting away from building a virtual reality co-working tool, High Fidelity has begun testing a voice and headphones-based online event platform and gathering place. The early beta lets users move their dot around a map and hear the voice of anyone close to them with spatial audio so voices get louder as you get closer to someone, and shift between your ears as you move past them. You can spontaneously approach and depart little clusters of dots to explore different conversations within earshot.

An unofficial mockup of High Fidelity’s early tests. Image Credits: DigitalGlobe (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

High Fidelity is currently using a satellite photo of Burning Man as its test map. It allows DJs to set up in different corners, and listeners to stroll between them or walk off with a friend to chat, similar to the real offline event. Since Burning Man was cancelled this year, High Fidelity could potentially be a candidate for holding the scheduled virtual version the organizers have promised.

Houseparty’s former CEO Ben Rubin and Strivr VR employee training startup founder Brian Meek are building a spontaneous teamwork tool called Slashtalk. Rubin sold Houseparty to Fortnite-maker Epic in mid-2019, but the gaming giant largely neglected the app until its recent quarantine-driven success. Rubin left.

His new startup’s site explains that “/talk is an anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralized conversations. We believe most meetings can be eliminated if the right people are connected at the right time to discuss the right topics, for just as long as necessary.” It lets people quickly jump into a voice or video chat to get something sorted without delaying until a calendared collab session.

Slashtalk co-founder Ben Rubin at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015

Whether for work or play, these spontaneous apps can conjure times from our more unstructured youth. Whether sifting through the cafeteria or school yard, seeing who else is at the mall, walking through halls of open doors in college dorms, or hanging at the student union or campus square, the pre-adult years offer many opportunities for impromptu social interation.

As we age and move into our separate homes, we literally erect walls that limit our ability to perceive the social cues that signal that someone’s available for unprompted communication. That’s spawned apps like Down To Lunch and Snapchat acquisition Zenly, and Facebook’s upcoming Messenger status feature designed to break through those barriers and make it feel less desperate to ask someone to hang out offline.

But while socializing or collaborating IRL requires transportation logistics and usually a plan, the new social apps discussed here bring us together instantly, thereby eliminating the need to schedule togetherness ahead of time. Gone too are the geographic limits restraining you to connect only with those within a reasonable commute. Digitally, you can pick from your whole network. And quarantines have further opened our options by emptying parts of our calendars.

Absent those frictions, what shines through is our intention. We can connect with who we want and accomplish what we want. Spontaneous apps open the channel so our impulsive human nature can shine through.


Read Full Article

Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts 101


You can always tell an Adobe Photoshop professional by how little they touch their mouse. You may know everything there is to know about Photoshop’s UI. Yet, if you’re not at least a little familiar with the hundreds of Photoshop keyboard commands sitting just beyond your fingertips, you’ll always fall short.

The following is a list of Photoshop keyboard commands you absolutely have to know. No one’s saying you have to memorize all of the Photoshop hotkeys, mind you. Practice regularly and you’ll learn them faster. And bookmark this page so you can always come back quickly when you need a refresher.

What follows are the Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts you need to know.

Note: You can download these keyboard shortcuts as a PDF below.

Basic Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Basic commands allow users to fix simple mistakes quickly.

To undo a single action within your project:

  • Ctrl + Z (Windows)
  • Cmd + Z (macOS)

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To undo multiple actions within your project:

  • Ctrl + Alt + Z (Windows)
  • Cmd + Z repeatedly (macOS)

Z: Access the Zoom tool by using the Photoshop Zoom shortcut.

To deselect a Photoshop selection:

  • Ctrl + D (Windows)
  • Cmd + D (macOS)

UI Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

User interface (UI) commands affect Photoshop’s interface and window listing. To remove all dialog boxes from your Photoshop window:

  • Tab (Windows)
  • Tab (macOS)

You can also toggle between different screen sizes by pressing the F key on both macOS and Windows.

Right-click [workspace background]: This changes the default workspace background on both macOS and Windows. Right-click the background and select one of the options that follow (Dark Gray is the default).

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

In a dialog window, holding down Alt will change your Cancel option to a Reset option on Windows. On macOS, holding down Option will do the same thing.

Click on the Reset option to reset any changes you made within the window.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To quickly select an item from a tool submenu on your toolbar (i.e. Eraser vs. Background Eraser), hold Shift and press a tool’s hotkey on either Windows or macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To scroll left on your art board:

  • Hold down Ctrl + Scroll Up [mouse wheel] for Windows.
  • Hold down Cmd + Scroll Up [mouse wheel] for macOS.

To scroll right on your art board:

  • Hold down Ctrl + Scroll Down [mouse wheel] for Windows.
  • Hold down Cmd + Scroll Down [mouse wheel] for macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl + Tab: This command cycles through tabs from left to right for both Windows or macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To cycle right-to-left, press Ctrl + Shift + Tab on either Windows or macOS. It’s just like moving between tabs in your browser.

Brush Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Brush commands allow users to modify various brush aspects quickly. Don’t forget that you can create your own Photoshop brushes too, for maximum customizability.

[ or ]: Shrinks or enlarges brush size with the brush size shortcut (Windows or macOS).

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

{ or }: Increases or decreases brush hardness for both Windows or macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Caps Lock: Using this command on Windows or macOS will change your brush’s cursor from a brush preview to a crosshair.

Color Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Color commands allow users to implement colors into their artwork using their keyboards.

D: Sets the foreground and background colors to default (black and white) on either Windows or macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To fill selections or a layer with a foreground color:

  • Alt + Backspace (Windows)
  • Option + Delete (macOS)

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To fill selections or a layer with a background color:

  • Ctrl + Backspace (Windows)
  • Cmd + Delete (macOS)

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

X (Windows or macOS): Switches between foreground and background colors.

Layer Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Layering is one of the most important—if not the most important—aspect of Photoshop. Which is why these Photoshop keyboard shortcuts are some of the most useful.

Number keys (1, 2, 3…): Selecting a particular layer and pressing a number button (either on Windows or macOS) will automatically adjust the opacity of that layer. So “1” = 10% opacity, “2” = 20%, “3” = 30%, and so on.

Quickly selecting two numbers will change a layer’s opacity to the percentage pressed (3 and 4 will give you an opacity of 34%).

Shift + Click [Layers panel]: To select multiple layers in your Layers panel (either on Windows or macOS), select a single layer, hold the Shift key, and select another layer.

This “select all command” will select every layer in between the first and second layers selected.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To select more than one layer in your Layers panel, but not all of them:

  • Press and hold the Ctrl key while clicking individual layers on Windows.
  • Press and hold the Cmd key while clicking individual layers on macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To duplicate a layer in your Layers panel:

  • Select the layer and press Ctrl + J on your keyboard for Windows.
  • Select the layer and press Cmd + J on your keyboard for macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To add a new layer in Photoshop underneath the currently selected layer:

  • Hold Ctrl and click on your New Layer button on Windows.
  • Hold Cmd and click on your New Layer button on macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To add a new layer above the currently selected layer, hold Shift and click on your New Layer button on both macOS and Windows.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To copy and paste all visible elements on your art board into a new layer:

  • Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E (Windows)
  • Cmd + Shift + Option + E (macOS)

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To select a layer’s borders automatically:

  • Hold Ctrl and click on a layer’s thumbnail in your Layers panel on Windows.
  • Hold Cmd and click on a layer’s thumbnail in your Layers panel on macOS.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

Shift + “+” or “-” [Layers Panel]: This toggles through blending modes in your Layers Panel for both Windows and macOS.

Transform Command Shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

The transform tool allows users to resize and skew layers at will.

To select your layer image and allow you to resize your image:

  • Ctrl + T on Windows.
  • Cmd + T on macOS.

To distort instead of resize, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (macOS) after your image has been selected. Drag the encircling square markers.

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To resize an image while centered:

  • Alt + Shift + Drag (Windows)
  • Option + Shift + Drag (macOS)

essential adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

To resize an image with preserved size ratio:

  • Shift + Drag [Transform tool] on Windows.
  • Option + Drag [Transform tool] on macOS.

FREE DOWNLOAD: This cheat sheet is available as a downloadable PDF from our distribution partner, TradePub. You will have to complete a short form to access it for the first time only. Download The Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet.

The Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

Shortcut (Mac) Shortcut (Windows) Action
Basic Command Shortcuts
Cmd + Z Ctrl + Z Undo a single action within your project
Cmd + Z (repeatedly) Ctrl + Alt + Z Undo multiple actions within your project
Z Z Zoom tool
Cmd + "+" Ctrl + "+" Zoom in
Cmd + "-" Ctrl + "-" Zoom out
Cmd + D Ctrl + D Deselect a Photoshop selection
H H Hand tool
S S Color Sampler tool
C C Crop tool
G G Graduated Filter tool
T T Text Tool
UI Command Shortcuts
Tab Tab Remove all dialog boxes from your Photoshop window
F F Toggle between screen sizes
Right-click on workspace background Right-click on workspace background Change the default workspace background
Option Alt Reset in a Dialogue Window
Shift + Tool hotkey Shift + Tool hotkey Select an item from a tool submenu in your toolbar
Cmd + Scroll Up Ctrl + Scroll Up Scroll left on artboard
Cmd + Scroll Down Cmd + Scroll Down Scroll right on artboard
Ctrl + Tab Ctrl + Tab Cycle through tabs
Ctrl + Shift + Tab Ctrl + Shift + Tab Cycle right-to-left through tabs
Brush Command Shortcuts
[ [ Shrink brush
] ] Enlarge brush
{ or } { or } Increase or decrease brush hardness
Caps Lock Caps Lock Change brush preview to crosshair
Eyedropper tool + Option + Click Eyedropper tool + Alt + Click Select Background color
Shift + Option + R Shift + Alt + R Clear brush tool
Option + Click brush Alt + Click brush Delete brush
Double-click brush name Double-click brush name Rename brush
Color Command Shortcuts
D D Set foreground and background colors to default
Option + Delete Alt + Backspace Fill selections or a layer with a foreground color
Cmd + Delete Ctrl + Backspace Fill selections or a layer with a background color
X X Switch between foreground and background colors
Control + Click Color Bar Right-click Color Bar Display Color Bar
Layer Command Shortcuts
Select a layer and press a number key (1-9) Select a layer and press a number key (1-9) Adjust the opacity of a layer
Shift + Click in Layers panel Shift + Click in Layers panel Select multiple layers in your Layers panel within a set range
Press and hold Cmd key while clicking individual layers Press and hold Ctrl key while clicking individual layers Select multiple, individual layers within your layers panel
Cmd + J Ctrl + J Duplicate a layer
Hold Cmd and click on your New Layer button Hold Cmd and click on your New Layer button Add a new layer underneath the currently selected layer
Hold Shift and click on your New Layer button Hold Shift and click on your New Layer button Add new layer above currently selected layer
Cmd + Shift + Option + E Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E Copy and paste all visible elements into a new layer
Hold Cmd and click on thumbnail in Layers Panel Hold Ctrl and click on thumbnail in Layers Panel Selects a layer's borders automatically
Shift + "+" or "-" in Layers panel Shift + "+" or "-" in Layers panel Toggle through blending modes in Layers panel
Cmd + Shift + N Ctrl + Shift + N New layer
Cmd + G Ctrl + G Group layers
Cmd + Shift + G Ctrl + Shift + G Ungroup layers
Cmd + Option + A Ctrl + Option + A Select all layers
Cmd + Shift + E Ctrl + Shift + E Merge visible layers
Transform Command Shortcuts
Cmd + T Ctrl + T Select a layer image to resize it
Hold Cmd and drag square markers Hold Ctrl and drag square markers Distort an image instead of resizing it after the image has been selected
Option + Shift + Drag Alt + Shift + Drag Resize an image while centered
Option + Drag Shift + Drag Resize an image while preserving size ratio

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Give You the Power

Practice these Photoshop keyboard shortcuts once, then again, then again. That’s the only way you’ll remember them all (and start to understand the basics of Photoshop). This is just a small selection of the available shortcuts—check the official Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts if you don’t believe us.

The best thing about working through these Photoshop keyboard shortcuts though is that because Adobe software works in tandem with one another, you’ll be able to use most of these keyboard commands (where they apply) with other Adobe software.

There’s almost no limit to what you can do with Photoshop. Even if you’ve mastered multiple tutorials, learning Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts will save you time. Better yet, it’ll save you from having to find your way around Photoshop’s cavernous UI. Try these out, and give your mouse a break.

Image Credit: Yaruta/Depositphotos

Read the full article: Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts 101


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