Written by Bryan Wilson
Why do you have a computer? How do you use your Mac? Is it for work? Fun? Are you a creative artist? Real-estate agent? Student?
When I sit down in front of my own MacBook, and roll up my sleeves, I’m usually dividing my time between 3 – 4 basic functions: Using the internet to do tech research, editing music or video, communicating via email, iChat, or Word documents, and wasting some of that time on stupid surfing.
I’m fairly new to the Mac, I’ve only been a dedicated Mac user for 2 years, and the moment I learned about Keyboard Shortcuts I could never go back.
I’ve come to discover that getting in the habit of learning and utilizing Keyboard Shortcuts saves me time, helps me stay inside of my creative zone, both of which equal increased productivity, and better workflow. And when all is said and done, what’s really important is productivity and workflow. I don’t want to have to unplug from my creative zone to navigate through a myriad of menus to locate the function, tool, or command I need. In fact, sometimes, it’s a bummer to even have to reach down and click on my mouse. This is where keyboard shortcuts become more than a helpful resource; they become essential.
What are keyboard shortcuts? Holding down 2 or 3 particular keys on your keyboard at the same time, can tell your computer to execute certain tasks without having to locate that same function in the menus.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you’re working in Microsoft Word, and you want to print your document. You can mouse up to your File Menu and scroll down to Print Document, or you can simply hold down the Command [⌘] Key and the [P] key at the same time.
Now I want to save my document. Again, I can mouse up to the File Menu and select Save, or I can simply hold down the Command [⌘] Key and the [S] at the same time.
Now this is a very simple example. Some other programs have menus embedded inside of menus.
A better example of this is in iTunes, and iPhoto. Learning a few keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of time and mouse clicks, which leaves you free to use that same energy on channelling your creativity in whatever project you’re working on.
Now. First I’m going to tell you where you can locate all of the Keyboard Shortcuts for any given program for yourself.
Second, I’m going to help you decipher what some of the crazy symbols you’re going to see along the way.
Last, I’ll give you a list of most commonly used Keyboard Shortcuts to get you started.
Locating Keyboard Shortcuts.
Luckily these shortcuts are not a big secret; they’re quite easily found. They live in each and every menu for each and every program you can ever run on your Mac! Let’s go have a look at iTunes.
I want to create a new Playlist in iTunes, so I click on the File Menu (remember, the Menu Bar is at the top of the screen) and I see all of my options under File, one of which includes New Playlist.
Note the combination of symbols to the right of the New Playlist command. It looks like ⌘N. Guess what? That’s your keyboard shortcut for New Playlist in iTunes! It’s that simple!
And that’s how you find out the available Keyboard Shortcuts for any given program. Go into the menus, and have a look at the symbols to the right of the commands.
In iPhoto, I want to rotate my image to the right, because I shot it with my camera held sideways. I select my photo, and go up to the Photos Menu and I notice that I have an option to Rotate Clockwise, or Rotate Counterclockwise. I can also see from the symbols to the right of each command, that ⌥⌘R will Rotate Clockwise, while ⌘R Will Rotate Counterclockwise.
Wow. I can imagine that if I have dozens of photos that I want to rotate, I will NOT want to highlight each one, mouse up to the Photos Menu, and select Rotate every time. No, instead we can highlight the photo, and hit the Keyboard Shortcut. Much faster. Suddenly a 45 minute job turns into a 10 minute job. (Of course, you could simply highlight the entire group of photos needing to be rotated using the method Chris talks about in his iPhoto lesson in this issue, and hit the Keyboard Shortcut for Rotate Clockwise ONCE and be done with it.)
Now let’s talk about what those crazy symbols mean.
Symbols Demystified.
⌘ is the Command Key. This key is immediately to the left and right of the spacebar. Older Apple computers had an Apple logo printed on this key as well as the ⌘ symbol.
⌥ is the Option Key. 2 Keys left of the spacebar.
⌃ is the Control Key. 3 Keys left of the spacebar, and on some Macs is printed Cntl instead of Control.
⇧ is the Shift Key. You know where those are!
⌫ is the Delete Key.
➩ is the Tab Key.
There are some other crazy symbols, but this is a good primer for you, so let’s stop here for now.
Some Commonly used Keyboard Shortcuts.
Obviously we can’t list them all, but here’s a short list of Keyboard Shortcuts that you’ll find common to many programs across Mac OSX.
Print ⌘P
Save ⌘S
Select All ⌘A
Close Window ⌘W
New Window ⌘N
Copy ⌘C
Paste ⌘V
Cut ⌘X (Cut is the same as copy, but removes your highlighted object)
Undo ⌘Z (You should make this one your friend. I use it all the time!)
Quit ⌘Q
Show all Open Applications ⌘ ➩ (Command and Tab)
And now we’re going to step it up and add a third key.
Empty Trash ⌘ ⇧ ⌫ (Command, Shift, Delete – Finder must be selected)
That’s all for now. In upcoming articles, I’ll write more about Keyboard Shortcuts, and will also prepare some handy quick-reference cards you can download, print out and keep by your computer to refer to while working in programs like Photoshop or Final Cut, iPhoto, etc.
See you in December!
Thanks for reading
~ Bryan Wilson
FoleyPod
Ojai, California
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