Photoshop is known for its almost endless supply of shortcut commands that speed up the process of working with images.  I’ve found that I can do almost everything I need without even touching the mouse, which is not only fast, but is easy and fun to show off to other people.

Though most of the shortcut commands are documented in the Photoshop “Keyboard Shortcuts” dialog (see below), there are some “secret shortcuts” that aren’t documented anywhere.  Many of these shortcuts have already been found, and there are articles about them on Web Designer Wall and 11AM Design, to name a few.  However, I’m sure there are many other shortcuts that we haven’t found out about yet (and Adobe keeps adding more in each release).  I found a new one today, and I call it the “secret layer styles shortcut”.

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Editor

Switching Between Style Dialogs

Here’s how you can use the new shortcut:  In Photoshop, double-click on a layer that you want to add styles to.  This will bring up the

When in the Photoshop layer styles dialog, you can press Cmd (Ctrl) + 0-9 and it will switch to the style corresponding with that number.  For example, if I have some text that I want to add an Outer Glow to, I would double-click on the text layer to open up the Blending Options dialog, press Cmd + 3 to switch to the Outer Glow tab, and enter the settings I want.

Sure, it might not be the most revolutionary shortcut in the world, but it can help to speed up your projects a bit, which is always great.

(thank you Everaldo for the key icon)