Tim Grey’s Blog

I’ve finally completed work on a new book, which I’m co-authoring with Deke McClelland. It was an intense project, in part because it covers an intense subject. And also because Deke is so “particular” (which in this case is a euphemism for “demanding”) when it comes to how the images are prepared. The result will be nothing short of incredible, but it involves a huge amount of work.

Anyway, that’s not what I came here to tell you about. That was just the meandering path into this story:

While working on this book, preparing countless images that include a variety of elements (images, dialog boxes, and other interface elements, each on a separate layer) I was making extensive use of keyboard shortcuts.

That’s when it dawned on me that quite often, it seems, using Photoshop feels more like typing than working on images. So many keyboard shortcuts to employ, and in this case so many images that needed to be processed in something of an assembly line. While there is an incredible attention to detail involved with this type of work, it is attention to details about getting the screen shots just right, not about optimizing a beautiful photographic image, per se.

I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop, as they can greatly improve your efficiency working with this powerful tool. But I’d also be the first to admit that sometimes working a lightning speed with keyboard shortcuts makes it feel more like work than art. Then again, working on a book is supposed to be work!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Software, Digital. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.