Inside Photoshop: Search Articles

Cycle through Tool buttons quickly with this preference change

Application:

Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3/CS4

Operating Systems:

Macintosh, Microsoft Windows

I use keyboard shortcuts for everything and this may sound like a petty request, but it makes me nuts when I have to press [shift] when cycling through tools in the Tools panel that reside in the same space. Is there a way to do this without the modifier?

There’s no such thing as a petty request when you’re trying to shave off a few seconds to maintain top speed in Photoshop! And actually, there is an easy way to satisfy your request.

As shown in Figure A, if you click on a tool in the Tools panel, any underlying tools share the same keyboard shortcut. In this case, pressing J activates the Spot Healing Brush tool, and to activate the Healing Brush, Patch, or Red Eye Tool, you need to press the [shift] modifier as you press J to cycle through these tools.