DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Photoshop’s hotkeys speed up your workflow and free up more time for shooting

Jun 30, 2016 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

hotkey_challenge

Most of us have a fairly solid order of priorities in our lives.  Family comes first, then photography, then everything else.  For some folks, those first two are the other way around, but whatever allows us to spend more time with our family or our camera is a good thing.

I don’t really consider sitting at a computer to be photography, and as such, I want to spend as little time doing it as possible.  So, I use shortcut keys.  In this video, photographer David Justice shows us how much time we can save by letting go of the mouse and using keyboard shortcuts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLg1CeLEyc

At first glance, the time savings on this particular edit, which was pretty basic, might not seem like a huge amount.

with-and-without-hotkeys

A minute and fifty seconds doesn’t really seem like a massive difference, but this was a very simple and quick edit.  Not using hotkeys has still added 26% to the editing time.  If you’re doing something a little more complex with lots of switching between tools, this extra wasted time can become a much higher percentage.

That’s only one image.  If you have to edit a whole session and there’s 20 images, that’s well over half an hour saved.  If you have several sessions you need to work on, it could save you a whole day of sitting at the computer when you could be out shooting or spending the day with your kids.

As mentioned in the video, keyboard shortcuts come in especially useful if you’re using a Wacom tablet, but even with a mouse they are a huge time saver.  Much of my Photoshop work I can do with the mouse, and I’m using hotkeys often to speed up tasks.

When I do need to switch over to the Wacom, things get a little tricky for me, being left handed (I use a mouse in my right hand), but another option you can consider is a second completely custom shortcut keyboard.

For now, I just have to suffer with awkward claw-like manoeuvres when I need to use the Wacom, but a second keyboard would make life a whole lot easier, and still let me keep my regular shortcut keys for when I’m using the mouse.

If you don’t want to have to sift through the preferences and figure out what every keyboard shortcut is, here are all the default Adobe CC shortcuts for each of their products.

Creating your own actions in Photoshop for commonly performed tasks can also cut a lot of your post work time, and they can be bound to hotkeys as well.

How else do you speed up your post production workflow and productivity on the computer?  Let us know in the comments.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Speed Up Your Workflow With This Free Lightroom Plugin That Displays A Grid Of The Focus Points Used By Your Camera Default ThumbnailPaddy For Lightroom Adjusts Images Via Hotkeys, Midi Controllers and External Keyboards The BrushKnob USB dial wants to help you speed up your Photoshop workflow Ten top tips to help speed up your video editing workflow

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: Adobe Photoshop, hotkeys, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, workflow

About John Aldred

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

« Adobe Spark Page – How To Create Gorgeous Web Magazine Style Pages
Build your own touchscreen photo booth with a Raspberry Pi »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • The best photo-video April’s fools jokes for 2023
  • Clay Cook’s trippy portraits are the perfect combination of AI and real photography
  • Canon is starting to let 3rd parties make RF mount lenses
  • Canon recalls some EOS R10 bodies over “loud noises”
  • Netflix sued for using unauthorized drone footage in advertisement

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy