Friday, July 1, 2011

Seven Typography Shortcuts for Photoshop

Hear are few new Photoshop shortcuts related to typography so I figured that I'd share them. If you spend a lot of time in the program, you probably have seen most of these, but hopefully there's a new one in here for you. I know I always like finding ways to be more efficient and everyone likes to learn a new trick, right?

Paragraph Size 

(with type tool selected) Option + ClickIf you know you need a column of text that is a specific number of pixels wide (or tall), this can be a faster solution than using your guides and rulers.
Paragraph Size

Highlight Text in Layer

Double Click Text Layer Icon. This is one I haven't yet incorporated into my workflow but seems helpful. Double-click the "T" in the layer palette and all the text on that layer will highlight, then make desired changes.
Highlight Text

Close Text Box

Command + ReturnClose a live text box. This one's nice because simply hitting return will just add a line break to the text - d'oh! Pressing esc and losing the changes you just made isn't really helpful either. Hit cmd + return, and then you're free to jump over to the Move Tool or whatever else you might want. (Props to Ethan for this one - I'm pretty sure he mentioned this one the other week.) *Update: If you're using an extended keyboard, simply pressing the enter key will also close the text box. Thanks to all the commenters who pointed this out!
Close Text Box

All Caps

Command + Shift + K. This can be a quick way to toggle caps for any text. It's the same thing as hitting the all caps button on the Character panel. Pretty straightforward.
All Caps

Text Size 

Command + Shift + </>. This can be helpful if you're just bumping the text down one point size or if you're wanting to get a feel for the sizing on the fly. Hitting option as well will change the font size by 10pts instead of just 1pt at a time.
Text Size

Tracking

(with text highlighted) Option + Left/Right. Increases the spacing between all the letters in the highlighted area.
Tracking

Kerning 

Option + Left/Right. I'm assuming most people use this one already but a necessity if you're kerning some headline text.
Kerning

Extras

Here are a few random quick ones that might pop up while you're designing. I haven't memorized all of them (and there are certainly plenty more) but knowing the n-dash and m-dash is definitely worthwhile.
  • N-dash: option + dash
  • M-dash: option + shift + dash
  • Ellipsis: option + semi-colon
  • Copyright: option + G
  • Angle Quotes Right: option + shift + backslash
  • Angle Quotes Left: option + backslash
  • Bullet: option + 8
Collection

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