PhotoShop 7 Power Shortcuts
Book Review by J.William MarrAdobe PhotoShop, now in version 7, is an expensive, extremely complex, application; a very versatile but intense user of system resources. It is by far the prime application used in the graphic, photo-processing and printing industry.
Because of PhotoShop's complexity, the user is forced to traverse multiple menus to execute a command. The alternative is to execute a shortcut; pressing a key or a combinations of keys to execute a command. This book is not a primer, but rather a collection of the more than 600 shortcuts that exist in the program, some of which are not published in any of the PhotoShop manuals.
The major part of this book is the itemization of all the shortcuts. For each shortcut there is a table showing which version of PhotoShop and ImageReady it is applicable to. This is followed by the shortcut keystrokes used both for the Mac and for the Windows operating system. Finally, if necessary, there is a brief description of the options and exceptions of the particular shortcut. This layout makes it possible to describe three to five shortcuts to a page. The itemization is in a natural sequence; Palettes, Tools, Navigation, Dialog Boxes, File Menu, Edit Menu, Image Menu, Layers Menu, Select Menu, Filter Menu, View Menu and Windows Menu. The last ten pages are a description of Actions, the PhotoShop technique that enables the user to create his own shortcuts.
The book is simple , well thought out and follows a natural sequence. I however found it difficult to review for one reason; as I came to each new page, I would start reading and then say "Hey, does this really work that way" or "I've always wanted a quicker way to do this!". I would then bring up PhotoShop and the review would be put aside again while I played with the new shortcut.
Neither the author nor I recommend that you read this book and start memorizing the shortcuts. It is my recommendation (and his) that you analyze the procedures you follow and slowly start using the shortcuts to call them up. This weekend I saw a demonstration of portrait retouching by a man who does it eight to ten hours a day, getting wedding photographs ready for printing. Almost
all his actions were started by use of the shortcuts. The steps he goes through are almost the same in all the photographs he processes during the day. As a result, the amount of time he saves by using shortcuts is quite considerable.I recommend this book to the serious user of PhotoShop. Using this book to implement shortcuts will dramatically increase your efficiency and make your PhotoShop experience more pleasant. Lastly, I would recommend the title of this book be changed to "PhotoShop 7 Power Shortcuts for the Power User".
PhotoShop 7 Power Shortcuts
Michael Ninness
New Riders Publishing
201 West 103rd Street,
Indianapolis, IN 46666290
200 pages, $19.99