Spacebar for Move Tool:

Pressing the space bar will temporarily switch you to the hand tool for panning
your document no matter what tool is active (except the text tool in typing mode
). Also, you can use the space bar to move selections and shapes as you are crea
ting them. As start drawing a selection or shape, press the space bar while keep
ing the left mouse button held down, and reposition the selection or shape.
Spacebar modifiers:
Space-Ctrl and click to zoom in.
Space-Alt and click to zoom out.
Caps Lock for Precise Cursors:
The caps lock key will change your cursor from crosshairs to brush shape and vic
e-versa. Switching to a crosshair cursor for precision work can be useful, but t
he main reason this shortcut is listed here is because it trips so many people u
p when they accidentally hit the caps lock key and then can't figure out how to
get the cursor back to their preferred style.
Zooming In and Out:
The quickest way to zoom in and out is the hold the Alt key while rolling the sc
roll wheel on your mouse, but if you need to zoom in and out in precise incremen
ts the following shortcuts are worth memorizing.
Ctrl-+ (plus) to zoom in
Ctrl-- (minus) to zoom out
Ctrl-0 (zero) fits the document to your screen
Ctrl-1 zooms to 100% or 1:1 pixel magnification
Undo and Redo:
You may know the Ctrl-Z shortcut which performs "undo" in most programs, but in
Photoshop, that keyboard shortcut only goes back one step in your editing proces
s. If you want to undo multiple steps, get in the habit of using Alt-Ctrl-Z inst
ead so you can hit it repeatedly to go back many steps.
Alt-Ctrl-Z = Step Backward (undo previous action)
Shift-Ctrl-Z = Step Forward (redo previous action)
The History Palette in Photoshop:
Delete Selection (Deselect)
After you have made selection, at some point you are going to need to deselect i
t. You'll use this one a lot, so you may as well memorize it.
Ctrl-D = Deselect
Change Brush Size and Hardness:
The square bracket keys [ and ] are used to increase or decrease brush size. By
adding the Shift key, you can adjust brush hardness.
[ = decrease brush size
Shift-[ = decrease brush hardness or soften brush edge
] = increase brush size
Shift-] = increase brush hardness
Fill Shortcuts:
Filling areas with color is a common Photoshop action, so it helps to know the s
hortcuts for filling with the foreground and background colors.
Alt-backspace = fill with foreground color
Ctrl-backspace = fill with background color
Add the Shift key to preserve transparency while filling (this only fills the ar
eas containing pixels).
Shift-backspace = opens the fill dialog box
Also useful when working with fills, here are the color picker shortcuts:
D = reset color picker to default colors (black foreground, white background)
X = swap foreground and background colors
Create Selection from Layer Content:
When you want to create a selection from the filled pixels of a layer, press the
Ctrl key while clicking on a layer thumbnail in the layers palette. Note that t
his takes into account the transparency of the layer's contents, so if you creat
e a selection from a layer with partially transparent areas, that transparency w
ill carry over to your selection.

Emergency Reset:
When you're working in a dialog box and gotten off-track, there is no need to ca
ncel the dialog and then reopen it to start over. Simply hold your Alt key down
and in most dialog boxes, the "Cancel" button will change to a "Reset" button so
you can get back to where you started.
Reset Preferences To Fix Many Problems With Photoshop
Selecting Layers
Generally, selecting layers is easier to do using your mouse, but if you ever ne
ed to record an action with layer selection changes, you will need to know the s
hortcuts for selecting layers. If you select layers with the mouse while recordi
ng an action, the layer name is recorded in the action, and therefore, the speci
fic layer name may not be found when the action is played back on a different fi
le. When you select layers using keyboard shortcuts while recording an action, t
hen it is recorded in the action as a forward or backward selection instead of a
fixed layer name. Here are the shortcuts for selecting layers with the keyboard
:
Alt-[ = select the layer below the currently selected layer (select backward)
Alt-] = select the layer above the currently selected layer (select forward)
Alt-, (comma) = select the bottom-most layer (select back layer)
Alt-. (period) = select the top-most layer (select front layer)
Add Shift to these shortcuts to select multiple layers. Experiment to the get th
e hang of the Shift modifier.