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For PSP8, Jasc have re-assigned many of the keyboard shortcuts from V7. It's no longer 'L' for layer, and 'C' will no longer toggle the colour palette on and off - it will give you the clone brush instead. This has upset a lot of people, (not suprisingly, IMHO) because people are always most comfortable with what's familiar to them. It's unfortunate that they've been changed, but the good news is that if you want to, it's really easy to put them back the way you prefer them. You can assign almost any command to any key in V8 - as long as the command is available on the drop-down list on the Customize Keyboard dialogue.
Tip: just in case you're curious about it, the new keyboard shortcut for the layer palette is 'F8' and the shortcut to toggle the colour palette (ahem.....materials palette!) is now F6.
Here's how you can change them, but this is a tutorial with a difference: for once, you may not want to follow this tut to the very letter. Below I'll be re-assigning the shortcut key that is currently assigned to the Background Eraser (the letter 'X'), to the Exit command. If you don't wish to make the exact same change then I suggest you either follow along with your eyeballs until you get the gist of the steps involved, or even better still you can subsitute your own preferences along the way - the steps will be exactly the same.
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As always, if you have any questions about this tut, or any comments or suggestions in general your feedback is always welcome. Just click on the link above to contact me.
1. First of all we need to call up the keyboard map. Go to View>Customize and click on the Keyboard tab to bring it to the front. You'll now see something similar to what is shown below:
2. The Category drop down menu is a list of all the command categories, such as File, Edit, View, Image, and so on that (for the most part) correspond to the same commands on your drop-down menu at the top of the PSP8 interface. The Commands drop down list contains the commands for each particular category. To see all the commands that are available for you to change, scroll down to the bottom of the Category list until you see 'All Commands'. Have a good scroll down through the list and see what choices are available; all of these commands can be assigned to a shortcut key on the keyboard. Quite a selection eh? Methinks they're gonna have to make bigger keyboards in the future. ;-) When you've finished checking them out, go on with step 3 below.
3. Since I'm already there, I'm going to stay with the All Commands list and scroll down to the one I want to assign a new shortcut key to: the 'Exit' command. I've decided 'X' for exit will be pretty easy to remember - even for someone who has a Swiss-cheese memory like me ;-) Even though the 'X' key already has a shortcut assigned to it by default (the Background Eraser tool) I've deciced I'd rather have a quick and easy way of exiting PSP8, rather than use a shortcut to the Background Eraser (which I never use). With the 'FileExit' command highlighted, I've clicked inside the 'Press New Shortcut Key'. Now all I have to do is literally what it's asking me to do: I've pressed the 'X' key on the keyboard. An 'X' now appears in the box. To finish off, click on the 'Assign' button, close the box and that's all there is to it (see below).
4. You can assign, and re-assign as many shortcut commands as you wish this way. For further reading and to see the entire list in a little more detail, go to Help>Keyboard Map, and similar to before, scroll-down to the bottom of the drop-down list under Category and you'll see all the choices available (see below, top). Wow......that's quite a list huh?! It gets even better - you can now assign shortcut keys for the Browser as well. Go to where it says 'Show Accelerator for' and scroll down below 'Default' to where it says 'Browser'. You'll see oodles of commands available here also (see below, bottom). You can change the Browser keyboard shortcuts exactly how you changed them for the Default keyboard: by going to View>Customize>Keyboard, but instead of having 'Default' showing on the 'Set Accelerator For' box (which you'll find to the left of the 'Press New Key' box, see above) make sure 'Browser' is showing before you make your changes. Pretty impressive, huh?
So many choices......so few keys!! ;-)
Even the Browser gets in on the act in PSP8.
Enjoy your customizing - now all you'll have to do is to remember where to find all your new shortcuts ;-)
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