Digital illustration in Photoshop becomes significantly faster when you master the right shortcuts and viewing techniques. The biggest challenge illustrators face is objectively evaluating their own work—spotting errors that would be obvious in someone else's art.
These seven shortcuts focus on two key areas: seeing your work more clearly through value checks and canvas flipping, and speeding up common tasks like selections, coloring, and layer management.
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Practical Tips
Here are the key shortcuts and techniques covered in the tutorial:
- Set up a grayscale proof (View > Proof Setup > Custom > Working Gray) and toggle with Ctrl/Cmd+Y to check values while preserving your colors
- Create a custom shortcut for horizontal canvas flip (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > View > Flip Horizontal) to instantly see your work from a fresh perspective
- Assign a shortcut to Expand Selection (Select > Modify > Expand) to eliminate halos when filling selected areas with the magic wand tool
- Use Shift+Plus/Minus with the move tool selected to quickly cycle through blend modes for highlights and textures
- Toggle auto-select on the move tool with Ctrl-click, and Alt-click layer thumbnails to center and fit layers to your view
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