20 Most Useful Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Keys

Photoshop has a huge range of shortcut keys for speeding up your day. Here are 20 best shortcut keys:

CTRL + S (Save) 

CTRL + Shift + S (Save As) 

F (Cycle screen modes) - This shortcut switches between Standard screen mode, Maximized screen mode, Full screen mode with menubar and Full screen mode. These modes offer better working enviroments for different tasks.

Tab (Hide/show palettes) - This is a useful tool for when you want to hide the palettes quickly to view you image(s) in full screen mode.

CTRL + Z (Undo) - This tool allows you to go back one step. Press twice and it will show you previous step and then current, allowing you to compare between the two.

CTRL + '+' / '-' (Zoom in / out) - This is much quicker than using the zoom tool.

CTRL + 0 (Fit to screen) - Fits image to screen.

Caps Lock (precise cursor)  This makes tool cursors switch between standard and more precise cursors for extra control. This is particularly useful for selection tools.

Spacebar (Hand tool) - Temporarily makes the Hand tool active when using any other tools. This tool allows you to drag your way around a zoomed in image.

B (Brush Tool) - This shortcut is invaluable when working with a number of techniques.

[ (Decrease brush size) - Another great time saver.

] (Increase brush size) - What can I say?

Shift + [ (Increase brush softness)

Shift + ] (Increase brush hardness)

1 - 0 (Tool opacity) - Press two numbers - one quickly after the other to give you any opacity you require. eg. 05 is 5%, 50 is 50%. 

CTRL + J (New Layer Via Copy) - This command will copy the entire active layer or, if a selection has been made, everything within this.

CTRL + Shift + N (New layer) - Adds a new empty layer above the active layer in the stack.

CTRL + Alt + Shift + E (Stamp Visible) - This command stamps all visible layers into a new, separate layer containing a compressed version.  Photoshop CS3 will create a new layer for you, but older versions require an empty layer to be created and active for this to work. This command is useful if you want to maintain all of your individual layers below a flattened version of the image, all in the same file.

CTRL + G (Group layers) When you select multiple layers that you with to put into a folder within the layer stack, this shortcut will do just that. Don't forget to rename your layers and layer groups to avoid any confusion.

CTRL + Alt + Shift + K (Keyboard shortcuts and menus dialogue) - This will bring up a dialogue box showing all the shortcuts available in Photoshop.