10+ Photoshop Keyboard Shortcut Commands for the Layers Pallets You Need to Know

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As many of you may know, Photoshop is a powerful tool. It can be used for creating photo manipulations, UI design, or even to edit/post edit images. If you use Photoshop long enough you soon realize that there are just to many movements of the mouse and clicks to navigate the Photoshop palettes. To be more productive, Adobe has added a large list of keyboard shortcut commands to speed up productivity in working in Photoshop. Image Source: Flickr

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Commands for the Layers Pallets

In fact there are so many, I have a hard time remembering them. So in order to have easy access to them, I decided I would create a cheat sheet and because I believe these keyboard shortcut commands are so important, I have decided to share with a few important ones from the Layers Palette. These are not all of them, just a handful of good ones. Many of these shortcuts can be used on older versions of Photoshop but they should work with Photoshop CC.

As time goes on, I will share more keyboard shortcut command from the different tools of Photoshop and even create a large document with as many as I can find…

Many of these shortcuts I have collected from different websites, tutorials, books, and even from the Adobe support site. I never documented as to where they came from.

Open and Close The Layers Palette

Every once in a while, the Layers Pallet might close on you or you like to keep yours closed for some reason. It isn’t all that hard to turn it back on, but it does mess with your work flow and slow down your productivity. To speed things, there is short cut command to open and close the Layers Palette…

• Press F7 on both Mac and Windows systems.

Flatten Layers

Photoshop uses layers and it makes your editing process a lot easier. So at some point, you will have to use layers. When you are finished using the layers tool or finished with the project, you will have to flatten the image. The easiest and fastest way to do that is use the below shortcut command…

• Mac: Cmd + Alt + Shift + E
• Windows: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E

Create a New Layer with New Layers Dialog Box

When working with layers, you will have to make new layers. The keyboard shortcut is…

• Mac: Shift + Cmd + N
• Windows: Shift + Ctrl + N

Create a New Layer bypass New Layers Dialog Box

When working with layers, you will have to make new layers. To do that on the fly, the keyboard shortcut is…

• Mac: Shift + Cmd + Option + N
• Windows: Shift + Ctrl + Alt + N

Create a New Layer Below The Currently Selected Layer

Photoshop automatically adds new layers to the actively selected layer. To add the layer below the active layer, use the this command. Please note, this option does not work on the background layer.

• Mac: Press the Cmd button and click the new layer button on the create new layer tool box.
• Windows: Press the Ctrl button and click the new layer button on the create new layer tool box.

Load Layer Contents as a Selection

Sometimes you need to load layers contents as a selection. To do that with the keyboard shortcuts…

• Mac: Cmd and -click the icon on a layer in the Layer’s panel.
• Windows: Ctrl and -click the icon on a layer in the Layer’s panel.
• Mac: Cmd and shift to add additional layers to the selection.
• Windows: Ctrl and shift to + additional layers to the selection.
• Mac: Option-Cmd to subtract another layer from the selection.
• Windows: Alt + Ctrl to subtract another layer from the selection.
• Mac: Option + Cmd + Shift to create the intersection of two layers.
• Windows: Alt + Ctrl + Shift to create the intersection of two layers.

Select All Layers

If you need to select all layers you can do that by using the keyboard shortcut command….

• Mac: Cmd + Option + A will select all layers.
• Windows: Ctrl + Alt + A will select all layers

When you use select all layers, this will select all layers including the hidden layers in the selection. But the background will not be selected in the shortcut.

Merging Layers

Sometimes you might need to merge the layers you are working with. If so, you can use the keyboard shortcut command…

• Mac: Cmd + Shift + E to merge visible layers.
• Windows: Crtl + Shift + E to merge visible layers.
• Mac: Cmd + Option + E creates a new layer and pastes flattens the selected layers.
• Windows: Ctrl + Alt + E creates a new layer and pastes flattens the selected layers.
• Mac: Cmd + Option + Shift + E creates a new layer and pastes the flattened versions to all layers.
• Windows: Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E creates a new layer and pastes the flattened versions to all layers.