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Keyboard shortcuts in CS4

Adobe has, for a very long time, been at the forefront of the design community as the software of choice for web and print design. When Adobe starting buying out Macromedia, they took great care in turning their individual pieces of software into a suite; all programs are supposed to work harmoniously with each other for a more efficient and enjoyable work flow. However, they dropped the ball on one of the most simple aspects of this feat; shortcut keys.

One can argue that they didn't change the shortcut keys on all of the programs because people were already used to, and had already established, their muscle memory for the pre-established keystrokes. My opinion is that the new programs have been around long enough that it's time to make the simplest aspect of consistency consistent. Let's face it, it's completely absurd that to hide an application you press Command-H in Dreamweaver, Command-Shift-H in Photoshop, and Illustrator totally lacks a default keystroke for hiding altogether.

Now, Adobe doesn't appear to be changing this any time soon, however they did set the programs up to customize all key commands on your own.

It's honestly as simple as selecting Edit > Keystrokes

From there, you can view either shortcuts for tools or shortcuts for each menu item categorized by a high level menu option.

Once you find a shortcut you would like to change, click on the appropriate column and then simply type the keys you would like to assign to that shortcut and the symbols for those keys will appear. Hit save and you're all set – and one step closer to better efficiency.

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Keyboard shortcuts in CS4

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