Best 9 Photoshop Shortcuts for UI Designers
While dealing with designs on Photoshop, the designers working for manpower consultancy and other businesses usually have some deadlines to finish the given project. Therefore, to do so, it is important that the designers are aware of all the shortcuts that can be used in Photoshop. These are the basics while working on the application and should be learnt by all designers when they work for a manpower consultancy so that they can complete the designs quicker. This is important because not even some professionals are aware of these shortcuts. Therefore, provided below are some shortcuts for the designers to know and learn.
1. Copy CSS
There are two aspects of design, namely creative and coding. Many designers are involved in both these aspects as the manpower consultancy and other companies may not hire two people for a given project. Therefore, the designers who are also involved in coding their design needs to know about this shortcut. This shortcut may help you in copying the Cascading Style Sheets or CSS of not just one but each and every element that is present in your whole document. This can be done in the following way. The CSS has layers and to copy it, you need to click here on the layer you want to choose and then select ‘Copy CSS’ option. For use, a sneak peak of the CSS is visible on the clipboard.
2. Adobe Preview
This is looked upon as a great feature by most of the designers. This is because as the name suggests, it provides a preview of your designs. This means that it allows you to look at your designs on a particular screen size of your choice. This comes in when the designers have to check up if each and every pixel looks perfect on every device.
3. Artboards
In comparison to the other basic shortcuts, this one might be a bit of a niche one for the professionals who have been spending some time creating designs. This is because this feature or shortcut is a new addition to the Photoshop CC and therefore, the designers new to Photoshop might pick it up easily. For the UI designers, it is imperative that they employ several art boards because it proves to be a necessity. These multiple art boards are used in just one single document. This is done so that the designers feel that they are working on Illustrator and are able to put up their mockups on separate screens.
4. Saving designs for web apps and device apps
The saving of designs can also take time and be a hassle that may encourage designers to forget doing so. This could lead to a disaster if the computer lags at any stage. Therefore, to learn the shortcut for saving the design is essential so that it is simple and easy to remember and do. Usually, designers use the option on the menu bar to save their designs. The shortcut to do this is to press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S for Windows and Cmd+Shift+Opt+S for the Mac devices.
5. Eyedropper Shortcut
There might be times when while using the brush tool, you might not want to use the colors on Photoshop. Therefore, there is an option known as the eyedropper tool which can help you choose a particular color from an image too. But when the designers working for manpower consultancy agencies and other companies want to select this tool, they need not look for the tool on the panel and click on it. Instead, for temporary switch to the eyedropper tool, they can hold Alt or Option key and then once they release, the brush tool will come back.
6. Lorem Ipsum Generation
When mocking up for an application or a website, the UI designers might not always have access to a copy that might work for content. Therefore, Lorem Ipsum is available for the designers to choose and work with. Many professionals and beginners usually work with an application on the app that provides them with a tool that generates the Lorem Ipsum function. However, it is important to note that this can be done through Photoshop too. As some designers might not be aware of, Photoshop too has the Lorem Ipsum function. After drawing a text box, the designer can select the ‘Type’ option from the menu bar and then select ‘Paste Lorem Ipsum’.
7. Altering the units of measurement
When creating a new document, there might be some default settings on it that may need to be changed. Therefore, any UI designer working for organizations like a manpower consultancy or different brands may go through the struggle of changing these default parameters. One of these is the default measurement provided in inches more than often. To change this into pixels or any favored measurement of your choice, the designers might have to go to edit option, select preferences and finally go to units and rulers. However, it is easier to just right click on the ruler given around the document and select the appropriate measurement.
8. Copying shape attributes
This is the same as the copying of the CSS layers that was mentioned above. This comes in quite handy when the designers feel the need to or have to set about designing more than one shape element. When you copy a shape attribute, every property along with the color etc gets copied. This can be done by a right click on any layer, the properties of which you want in your copied attribute. Then select the option Copy Shape Attributes and finally choose the layer you would like to copy these attributes to.
9. Fill the layers easily
This function allows the designer to fill any layer of their choice with the color of their present foreground and background. This basically works towards finishing the design as soon as possible. For the Windows devices, this is done by pressing Alt+Delete for foreground and Ctrl+Delete for the background. For the Mac devices, you can press Alt+Backspace for the foreground and Cmd+Backspace for the background.
