This video lesson is an outtake from our Photoshop Essentials for Beauty Retouching course.

The term Keyboard shortcuts refers to a combination of keys that allow you to easily select or adjust a tool without the need to navigate to a certain part of the screen to activate it or dig through endless Photoshop menus.

While keyboard shortcuts may not make much of a difference when you are surfing the web, they will have a big impact on your retouching workflow and output in the long run.

As you become more adept at Photoshop, you notice that there are some tasks and actions you perform regularly. By investigating keyboard shortcuts to perform these tasks, you save a lot of time in the long run and become more efficient at your craft, which is extremely important in the current fast-paced digital world and rapid automation.

You can find the list of default Photoshop keyboard shortcuts here: Default keyboard shortcuts.

The steps to customize your shortcuts in Photoshop here: Customize keyboard shortcuts

 My Most Used Keyboard Shortcuts

^{By Julia Kuzmenko McKim}

One of my most used combinations of keyboard shortcuts is the brush size adjustment keys: Q and A.

They are different from the default hotkeys, and you will understand why they are much more convenient after watching the video (above) from our Photoshop Essentials for Beauty Retouching course.  that comes with our MUA Retouch panel purchase.

These will work for all of your retouching instruments including the Clone Stamp and Healing brushes.

Tool size adjustments are needed regularly throughout the retouching process, especially when Dodging & Burning. The ability to adjust my brush size on the fly allows me to work fast and keep my eyes locked in on the area I am retouching.

This is very important, especially if you are a busy freelancer and your time is YOUR money.

The next in line would be CMD (CTRL) + S to save the file you are working on – I press it quite often and it has become my second nature. I guess we all learn this the hard way after a few Photoshop crashes that make you lose some work that you have already done because it was not saved.

Saving your working file regularly in anticipation of software crashes helps to preserve your work and maintain your efficiency. Unfortunately, programs crash. When they do, your hard work invariably goes with them, unless you build habits on the front end that keep it from happening.

I am a longtime Mac user, so I will list my most used keys and key combinations for MacOS, and if you are a Windows user, just note that Command = Control, Option = Alt, and Shift is Shift for the both OS.

I use the Command, Option, and Shift keys in all sorts of keyboard shortcut combinations all the time. I would absolutely recommend that you go through the list of the default Photoshop hotkeys mentioned above to see in which combinations they are utilized.

Here are my favorites:

Decrease Brush/Tool Size > A 
Increase Brush/Tool Size > Q
Default Foreground/Background colors > D
Switch Foreground/Background colors > X

The above keys are probably the most used to speed up my Dodging & Burning because I typically work on a 50% Gray layer rather than on Curves adjustment masks, so I can switch between dodging and burning by simply pressing the X key as I work through the entire image.

Free Transform > Command + T
New layer via copy > Command + J
New layer via cut > Shift + Command + J
Toggle layer mask on/off (layer mask must be selected) > \ (backslash)
Scroll image with Hand tool > Spacebar-drag 
Zoom In > Command + + (plus)
Zoom Out > Command + – (hyphen)
Group layers > Command + G

And of course, there are many other useful shortcuts out there. I also use retouching panels in every single retouch, and they contribute to my fast retouching workflow the most.

The main idea of this lesson is to highlight the importance of pushing yourself right from the start in establishing simple habits that will significantly improve and accelerate your workflow in the long run.

Start memorizing and using some of the common keyboard shortcuts that will help you to work faster while keeping your eyes on the image without interruptions. Believe me, You will thank yourself later!