{"id":15713,"date":"2009-02-09T16:36:37","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T16:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnackdev\/2009\/02\/layer-related-shortcuts-you-might-want-to-know.html"},"modified":"2009-02-09T16:36:37","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T16:36:37","slug":"layer_related_shortcuts_you_might_want_to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/09\/layer_related_shortcuts_you_might_want_to\/","title":{"rendered":"Layer-related shortcuts you might want to know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">Based on some recent comments (e.g. &#8220;Please add a way to navigate through layers via the keyboard&#8221;), I get the impression that many people don&#8217;t know some\/all of the following: <\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li><strong>Opt\/Alt + left\/right bracket keys<\/strong> change layer selection, selecting the layer above\/below the current one. <\/li>\n<li>Those shortcuts plus <strong>Shift<\/strong> extend the layer selection.&#160; For example, to select the layer above the current one while keeping the current one selected, hit Shift-Opt-]\/Shift-Alt-].<\/li>\n<li><strong>Shift-Opt-,\/Shift-Alt-,<\/strong> (comma) selects the the current layer and all those below it.&#160; <strong>Shift-Opt-.\/Shift-Alt-.<\/strong>&#160; (period) selects the current layer and all those above it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Opt-,\/Alt-,<\/strong> selects the bottom layer.&#160; <strong>Opt-.\/Alt-.<\/strong> selects the top one. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Cmd-G\/Ctrl-G<\/strong> groups layers into a layer group (aka layer set, aka &#8220;little folder thing&#8221;).&#160; <strong>Shift-Cmd-G\/Shift-Ctrl-G<\/strong> ungroups layers. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Cmd-Opt-A\/Ctrl-Alt-A<\/strong> selects all layers. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Shift-Cmd-N\/Shift-Ctrl-N<\/strong> makes a new layer.&#160;Add <strong>Opt\/Alt<\/strong> to do so while skipping the layer options dialog box.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">And while we&#8217;re at it, you can also change blending modes via the keyboard:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Shift-plus<\/span> (=) selects the next blending mode.&#160; <strong>Shift-minus<\/strong> (-) selects the previous one.&#160; Note that the target of these changes depends on what tool is active.&#160; If you&#8217;ve got a painting tool (Brush, Clone Stamp, etc.) selected, the changes apply to the tool&#8217;s blending mode.&#160; If you&#8217;ve got other tools selected, they&#8217;ll apply to the blending mode of the selected layer.&#160; (My rule of thumb is to tap V to make the Move tool active before applying blending changes to a layer via the keyboard.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Shift-Opt-letter\/Shift-Alt-letter<\/strong> will set the selected tool\/layer to a specific blending mode.&#160; For example, M is Multiple, N is Normal, and H is Hard Light.&#160; A fairly complete list is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sitepoint.com\/article\/photoshop-shortcuts-glance\/\">here<\/a> (scroll down). <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">If you find this kind of thing useful, check out Trevor Morris&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/morris-photographics.com\/photoshop\/shortcuts\/#pscs4\">list of PS shortcuts<\/a>, or Michael Ninness&#8217;s old but useful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Photoshop-Power-Shortcuts-Michael-Ninness\/dp\/0735713316\">Photoshop Power Shortcuts<\/a> book.&#160; (I updated it for PS7.) \n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>[<b>Update<\/b>: See the comments below for more good suggestions.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Based on some recent comments (e.g. &#8220;Please add a way to navigate through layers via the keyboard&#8221;), I get the impression that many people don&#8217;t know some\/all of the following: &#160; Opt\/Alt + left\/right bracket keys change layer selection, selecting the layer above\/below the current one. Those shortcuts plus Shift extend the layer selection.&#160; For [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}