With Photoshop CS, you can customize short cut keys for features that currently have no shortcuts. You can also change existing default shortcuts to suit your personal preferences.

 

 When you create new shortcuts, or edit old ones, you should make a new keyboard shortcut file to store your customized set of shortcuts in. To do this, choose Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts from the menu bar, and click the note pad (new icon) in the resulting dialog box.

 

 

 

 

When you click the icon, you will be prompted to save a file named Photoshop Defaults Copy1 in the Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts folder. When you save this file, its name will appear in the text area labelled Set. The changes you make to the shortcuts will be stored in the file you just saved. You will then be able to choose which set of shortcuts you want to use from the Set drop list at the top of the dialog box.

 

To customize a shortcut, select the menu, tool, or palette of your choice using the options and menu arrows provided in the Shortcuts dialog box. For this example, we will customize the Open As command.

 

Click on the specific command you want to customize, and it will be highlighted in blue with a white box around the current shortcut. Simply press the key combination that you want to use as a shortcut for this command and click Accept to assign it. In the example given here, the Alt + Ctrl + Q keys were pressed, creating a new shortcut for the Open As command.

 

If you select a menu command or tool from the list and click the add button, you will be able to assign an additional shortcut to the command (i.e. one tool or function can have more than one shortcut).

 

If you click the Default button, the shortcut will revert to its default key combination. If you choose a shortcut combination that is currently assigned to another command or tool, Photoshop will inform you of the conflict (a single shortcut can only activate one function).

 

Click the OK button when you are finished, and your customized shortcuts will be available in the new shortcut set that you have created.