Photoshop: Solving the keyboard-shortcut issue

Mar-2-06, 2:01 pm by Hanford
File under: Adobe, Macromedia, Photoshop

Photoshop has long-ago run out of legit keyboard shortcuts for new commands. But if Adobe wanted to get serious about solving the issue, there's a lot of illegitimate ones they could use.

Space Modifier

Modifier keys are the keys you hold down before pressing another key to trigger a two-key shortcut. These keys traditionally are SHIFT, CTRL, and ALT.

My solution is to turn the spacebar into a modifier key. So, in the same way you can hit CTRL+T for Free Transform, you could hit SPACE+T for Transform Selection (or whatever you assigned it). Just think of the Spacebar as a really long shift key. Adding this opens up a whole new set of two-key shortcuts, and it doesn't break any existing shortcut.

If you think about it, it's almost as if the spacebar was destined for this fate in Photoshop. Photoshop seems to already treat the Space key as a modifer: it's main function is a temporary mode (the hand tool) that toggles on when the key is pressed, and toggles off when it's released. The only other keys that work that way in Photoshop are the modifiers.

And the key is wide enough that it can be accessed on either side of the keyboard, just like CTRL, SHIFT, and ALT. So using one hand to press SPACE+A is just as easy as pressing SPACE+L. It's as if there's spacebar keys on either side of the keyboard already.

Taking it farther: Super Modifiers

If Adobe really wanted to do something wild, they could make any key be a modifier, turning virtually every key into something I call a Super Modifier. It's a little hard to grasp at first, but it could work. Here's how:

Pressing-and-releasing any key (let's say the M key) would perform it's normal operation like it does in Photoshop today, so this change would not break a single existing keyboard command. The normal operation would trigger when the key is released.
Pressing-and-holding a key, then pressing another one, would treat that original key (let's say M again) as a Modifier key. So M+O could be assigned to Marquee: Circle, for example.

This would allow for an astounding number of unused combinations. And it would allow for some extremely logical ones, too. For example, the L modifier could stand for "layers" and L+D would be duplicate, L+M would be Layer Merge, L+C would be Create Clipping Mask, and on and on. The added benefit is that keyboard shortcuts are significantly easier to remember when they relate as some sort of mnemonic to the command they're performing.

The main problem with this is that unlike the traditional modifier keys (and the spacebar) some of these combinations are downright difficult to press with one hand. Try pressing L+A and you'll see what I mean. But that simply means that they keyboard shortcuts assigned to these modifiers need to be a little bit thought out. If they were reserved for each user to customize him/herself, the issue would be self-limiting.

Summary

There are definitely some creative solutions for the Photoshop keyboard shortcut issue for Adobe. Using Spacebar as a modifier seems like a natural fit, and I hope Adobe goes above-and-beyond to implement it as a configurable modifier in a future version.

I'm not 100% convinced that my Super Modifiers idea is a usable, but I think it warrants some R&D time and some User Testing to really say for sure. It's easy to dismiss an idea that hasn't been tested, but there's nothing like building something and testing it to really prove or disprove the potential in it.

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Hanford wrote: Oct-19-06, 7:19 pm

David,

I wrote a quick test to test this out, and my crummy Toshiba laptop supports any-five-keys down at one time, including the spacebar. Some machines may not support it, but then again, Photoshop has always had kinda hefty minimum system requirements.

Phosphor wrote: Apr-30-06, 7:27 am

Heya, Hanford...

I've poked around your site in the past a little bit (Love the style of the title image on your main website!), but having been recently re-referred to this blog entry through the PS/Win forum Feature Request section), I think I have something you may find interesting and relevant to this blog entry. I'd also enjoy your input and feedback, and wouldn't mind a little help with the concept.

Shoot me an email to the address attached (but hidden) to this comment...perhaps we could set up a time for a short AIM/iChat dialogue about it.

Phos....

David wrote: Mar-6-06, 7:24 am

Great idea, but this may not be possible, depending on the keyboard. As far as I understand, most keyboards use a modified grid to detect which keys are pressed at any one time. Keys can be used in combination as long as they don't share the same axis (or circuit) on the grid. Ctrl, Shift, Alt and the Windows key are given dedicated circuits to enable them to function as modifier keys.

At best, that means whichever keys share the same axis as the space bar cannot be used in combination with the space bar. At worst, the space bar could short-circuit every key that is used with it.

Think of this as the electronic equivalent of typewriter arms getting jammed when they are pressed together.

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