From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

Loading Deke's custom dekeKeys shortcuts - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

Start my 1-month free trial

Loading Deke's custom dekeKeys shortcuts

“

- [Instructor] In this movie I'll show you how to load my custom dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts which I personally find to be immensely helpful, because they allow me to move through Photoshop that much more quickly. So if you have access to my exercise files folder then you're gonna find a subfolder called 00_setup which contains a couple of HTML files which serve as the documentation as we're about to see and then we have a couple of .kys files right here which are the keyboard shortcuts themselves. Notice in each case we have different files for each platform. What you want to do is select the kys file that matches your platform and then right click on it. This is what you do on a Mac as well even though the menu is gonna look very different. You will see a command called open with and then you want to choose the most recent version of Photoshop CC which may be 2019 or later. So go ahead and choose the most recent version of Photoshop and that will bring Photoshop to the front. Now your either not gonna see anything or your gonna see this alert message which in my case is telling me that I have unsaved changes associated with my current shortcuts. Now if I want to save those changes I would click on the yes button. I don't want to save my changes however so I'll just click no. All that's gonna do is make the alert message disappear. So it's as if nothing has happened, but in fact you have loaded my custom shortcuts. To confirm that's the case go up to the edit menu and choose the keyboard shortcuts command which has its own shortcut of Control + Shift + ALT + K here on a PC or Command + Shift + Option + K on a Mac. Now you may wonder why I'm reading the modifier keys Control + Shift + Alt in the opposite order that they appear inside the menu and that's because here in the menu the shortcuts are flush right. So the first key is the letter or number key, in this case K, the second key is Control then Shift then ALT. So you read to the left and that is the industry standard by the way. If you tell somebody hey this keyboard shortcut is ALT + Shift + Control + K or Option + Shift + Command + K on a Mac then you're not gonna look like you know what your talking about, just FYI. Anyway I'll go ahead and choose that command and then I'm gonna make sure shortcuts for is set to application menus and I'll go ahead twirl open the file menu. When I say twirl open I mean click on that little twirly triangle right there in order to spin it down at which point you should see that this command right here open as smart object now has a keyboard shortcut of Control + Shift + ALT + O or Command + Shift + Option + O on the Mac. You should also see that your set now reads Photoshop defaults and in parenthesis modified. That word modified indicates that you've loaded some custom shortcuts. So to save them go ahead and click on this little hard drive with a ..., that is to say an ellipse is under it and that'll bring up this save as dialogue box. It'll automatically direct you to a keyboard shortcut subfolder inside of a presets folder that's nested very deep in your system. You want to leave this unchanged by the way. So you want to save to the default location and just go ahead and name your shortcuts anything you like. I'm gonna call em dekeKeys for Photoshop CC. You can see that I have some other shortcut files that I have created over time and truth is you can create as many of these things as you want. At which point I'll click the save button because I already have that file I'll go ahead and click yes to replace it and now notice set reads dekeKeys for Photoshop CC. If at any time you get sick of my shortcuts all you have to do is switch em back to Photoshop defaults and notice that open as smart object no longer has a shortcut whereas the open as command now has said shortcut of Control + Shift + ALT + O. That command is only available on the PC by the way and my guess is you've never used it in your life which is why it does not require a shortcut. Anyway I'm gonna switch my set back to dekeKeys for Photoshop CC right there and then I'll click okay. Now notice if I go to the file menu you can see that open as smart object sure enough has a shortcut as does this command right here place embedded which does not have a shortcut by default. All right now let's take a look at those HTML files. I want you to see that we have one for Windows and another for the Mac. So any where where you see a black keyboard shortcut that's a default. If it appears red then that's a dekeKeys shortcut, so it's a custom keyboard shortcut that I have given you. Any shortcuts that I have rejected will appear light gray. So for example open as no longer has the shortcut that has moved over to open as smart object. Then anything that appears brown means that you can't edit it directly with the keyboard shortcuts command. Anything in blue requires text to be active and so forth. All right now notice that things start off differently under Windows then they do on the Mac and that's because on the Mac your first menu is the Photoshop CC menu. The second menu is this guy right here, file which appears as the first menu under Windows. All right so you can look through here we've got a lot of red shortcuts as you'll see and all those shortcuts once again are a function of your having loaded dekeKeys. Now you can peruse these documents as much as you want, but I want you to see what might be my favorite shortcuts which are these guys right here which allow you to create and name new adjustment layers. So normally the static levels command has a keyboard shortcut of Control + L on the PC or Command + L on the Mac which is why I've chosen Control + Shift + L or Command + Shift + L on the Mac in order to create a nondestructive levels adjustment layer. For curves we have Control + Shift or Command + Shift + M. Vibrance is Control + Shift or Command + Shift + V. Hue saturation Control + Shift or Command + Shift + U. Black and white Control + Shift or Command + Shift + B. Then brightness/contrast Control + Shift or Command + Shift + / because after all a slash appears between the words brightness and contrast. Because these are generally the most common adjustment layers you'll create inside Photoshop I've give each and every one of them a shortcut. That's how you load my custom dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts here inside Photoshop CC.

Contents