Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
Every Photoshop shortcut, sorted by the job in hand
Adobe lists its shortcuts by menu. Nobody edits by menu. Halfway through a mask I want the key that turns it off for a moment, not everything that lives under the Layer menu, so I rebuilt the list around the work itself.
Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts is a free 17-page PDF quick reference with 382 shortcuts in 21 sections. Each shortcut sits on one row with the Mac keys and the Windows keys side by side, so it works on either machine without translating Cmd to Ctrl in your head.
The menu, tool and workspace keys come from the Summarize list I exported from my own copy of Photoshop in October 2026. The clicks and modifier keys come from Adobe's own keyboard shortcuts PDF. Where the two disagree, the copy of Photoshop on my desk wins.
What the reference covers
Everyday essentials that work in the canvas and in dialogues
Files, editing, image adjustments and filters
The Layer and Select menus, the Layers panel and Select and Mask
Tools, viewing documents, and selecting and moving
Painting and brushes, blending modes and type
Curves, Liquify, Puppet Warp, the Filter Gallery and Vanishing Point
Content-Aware Fill, Neural Filters, channels and actions
Many tool keys only work while the image has focus, so if a letter does nothing, click on the canvas and try again. The reference says so on page two, because it catches out almost everyone at least once.
If you want the editing method behind the keys, my free manual Adobe Photoshop for Photographers covers competition editing from the first layer to the final file.
Who it is for
These Photoshop keyboard shortcuts are for photographers who already know their way around Photoshop and want to spend less time in the menus. That means camera club members, enthusiasts preparing competition entries, and anyone who retouches more than a handful of files a week. The keys that save the most time are rarely the famous ones. Brush size and hardness, cycling blend modes, turning a mask off for a moment and nudging opacity in steps of ten are the ones that add up over an evening's editing.
The PDF is searchable, so Cmd+F on a Mac or Ctrl+F on Windows finds a shortcut by name. Print it and keep it beside the keyboard, or keep it open on a second screen while you work. Each section starts from the job rather than the menu, so the keys you use together sit together on the page.
The contents page and the opening section of the Photoshop reference
Find out more about Photoshop on Adobe's Photoshop page.
Download it free, print it on A4, and keep it beside the keyboard.
