Computersight -

When I was in high school my favorite class was art. I loved to paint, draw and sketch. I was often spending time after school to work on various projects and I always entered any art contests at the school. When one of my art teachers brought in a computer called Macintosh™ for the first time I laughed. She showed us a program called Photoshop™ that I thought was bulky and hard to use, confusing.

“That will never catch on,” I told my friends and teachers. “That’s just a novelty, a toy. Who would really want to create art on a computer?”

Little did I know that a little over ten years later I would be sitting in a college training to become a graphic designer. I could kick myself for not learning the computer back in high school when I had the chance. Oh sure, I had played around on a computer at home when I was a kid. Our family even owned an Apple™ knock-off called Franklin. (they went out of business years ago.) I would spend hours copying code from a magazine just to get the think to print a calendar or something similar. But, alas, no Photoshop.™ So, when I sat in that first day of design school and waited for the professor to come in and teach me about the Apple Macintosh™ I was understandably a little nervous.

But, like anything else in life, I learned that if you don’t dive in head first you don’t learn a whole lot. I tried my best and studied hard. There was a time when I really hated Photoshop™ because I just didn’t get it. It was too complicated and the instructor seemed to talk way too fast in a language of terms that were completely foreign to me at the time such as scanning, frequency, dots per inch and resolution. This was in the mid 90’s so a lot of this was new to everyone. We were learning Photoshop 3.0.™ If you are familiar with the program’s history you will know that it was very primitive at this stage.

Eventually I excelled and started to enjoy creating art in Photoshop.™ One of the things that I learned quickly and really seemed to help was keyboard shortcuts. My instructor couldn’t say it enough. He would say that if we didn’t learn our keyboard shortcuts we would not be able to meet our deadlines and if we didn’t meet deadlines we would be out of a job. Boy was he right! So, that’s why I am going to stress to you that you go about learning your keyboard shortcuts. I will outline some simple ones for you and tell you some ways to learn on your own.

Most people that use the computer regularly are familiar with the basics shortcuts for a computer. But, just in case I will go over a few. Generally the first letter of a word is matched with the command key (apple) or the control key (PC). Such as command or control – P is usually print on most computers. Similarly, command or control – O is usually open. As a designer you will definitely want to familiarize yourself with the copy, cut and paste shortcuts. They should be about the same for any application. They are command or control – C for copy, command or control – V for paste and command or control – X for cut.

The industry standard design programs that I use are Adobe Photoshop™, Adobe Illustrator™ and Adobe InDesign.™ When you buy these applications they usually come with a cheat sheet with several shortcuts. I urge you to use these as much as possible if you want to be an efficient designer. You will be amazed at the time it will shave off your day and allow you to finish your jobs faster (or goof off sooner as the case may be!).

Another important factor regarding keyboard shortcuts is the placement of your hand. You should keep your fingers placed near the command or control keys so that you can place your thumb on the modifier key (the first key to be placed) and then the corresponding letter. Such as command or control – P for print. After a while of working this way you will not even notice you’re doing it. You can also make use of a two-button mouse. The right button generally takes the place of the modifier and when pressed will bring up a menu of commands.

If you have been meaning to learn your keyboard shortcuts and haven’t because you feel it is too time-consuming or demanding I have some suggestions. Try learning just one shortcut a day. Work all day with this one shortcut only and try to only use the shortcut for executing this particular command. Or you could try two or three a day if you are brave. Then, the next day, or in a few days, whatever you feel comfortable with – try some more. Eventually you will learn several of them and they will become second nature to you.

If for some reason your software did not come with a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts there are several websites that list them that you could print out or you could simply just look in the menus of the program. For example, in Photoshop™ – the keyboard shortcuts are always listed to the right of the command in the menus. Take note of these and start using them. You will see a marked improvement in your speed and you will free up more time for other things. For more information you should also visit Adobe software’s website at http://www.adobe.com.