Okay I got along just fine and dandy for years without knowing most of the keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop or other programs. Now I spend a lot of time in Photoshop switching between tools and stuff like that. After awhile it can get pretty frustrating to move that mouse all over the place to get this tool or make that layer... So I learned the keyboard shortcuts... All through this tutorial site when I mention a tool or function that has a keyboard shortcut I place the shortcut next to it in parenthesis like this... brush tool (B)
On this page I am going to list out the shortcuts I use for easy finding of them... I didn't just memorize them all at once either. I started using one frequently and then added more as I went along. Learning all these keyboard shortcuts has done something else pretty cool for me too... It has made me significantly faster at editing then I ever could be with just using the mouse all the time. Since I edit a chapter in a day or two that means a lot to me. It saves me time at my computer working on manga and gives me some extra free time to spend reading manga or watching anime... I know why would a manga editor want to do any of that?!
Also so you know Photoshop tells you these shortcuts too... well most of them... I am using Photoshop CS2 so there might be one or two that are different if you are using a different version.
Lets begin with the tools shortcuts, these are the tools I use the most frequently and you better believe that I use the keyboard shortcuts for each and every one of them.
Brush tool (B)
Rectangle tool (U)
Clone tool (S)
Burn/dodge tool (O)
Eraser tool (E)
Marquee tool (M)
Move tool (V)
Text tool (T)
Zoom tool (Z)
Crop tool (C)
Lasso tool (L)
To switch between tools within a tool menu (SHIFT + the letter of the tool)
A major helper in the color area... to switch background and foreground colors (X)
To reset the foreground and background colors (D)
To bring up the level dialog (CTRL + L)
To bring up the resize dialog box (CTRL + ALT + I)
When working with layers there are a couple of shortcuts I use frequently and they are as follows...
Make a layer from copy (CTRL + J)
Make a layer (Transparent layer) (SHIFT + CTRL + N)
Some other things to know...
To change the diameter of tool simply right click when you have that tool selected and it will give you a pop-up menu to use right next to where you are with the mouse.
To exit a text layer use the enter key on your numeric keypad.
To copy a selection (CTRL + C)
To paste a selection (CTRL + V)
To open a file (CTRL +O)
To close a file (CTRL + W)
To make a new file (CTRL + N)
To save file as (CTRL + SHIFT + S)
To save file (CTRL + S)
These are not all the shortcuts there are just the ones I use most of the time... CS even allows you to make your own shortcuts... For things that I do all the time that don't have shortcuts I make actions for but we will discuss that in another tutorial...