Dark Side of the Lens

An excellent way to speed up your editing in Elements, on either the Mac or PC, is to start using keyboard shortcuts.

When I first started photo editing I did everything using the pulldown menus, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. As I became more proficient I found myself starting to use keyboard shortcuts. Even those these may seen, to some, an antiquated approach (who else remembers the days of using something like Wordperfect with huge keyboard overlays to help you remember eleventy hundred keyboard shortcuts?) they can greatly increase your speed when doing common tasks. For instance, it is far faster to do “<command>o” to open a new file than it is to select the correct menu pulldown with your mouse.

So, I have composed a list of shortcut keys to help those that wish to use them. The list is not exhaustive but it covers all of the ones that I feel you are likely to use frequently enough to make them worth remembering.

Don’t worry if you do not understand what all of these keys do yet, all will become clear as we explore deeper into the wonderful world of Elements.

In addition to the images above, which have limited practical use in this format, I have provided you a PDF which you can download to use or print. If you do not have Adobe Reader to access this file you can get it for free from here.

Download printable version

You are welcome to use this document however you wish, even put it on your own web site or blog, as long as you do not remove the Dark Side of the Lens information shown within. A link back to here will also be very much appreciated.

Simon
http://darksideofthelens.com

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Editing Tips and Tricks. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.