Essential keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Animate and for animation in Photoshop

Designer and animator Pablo Cuello shares the most popular shortcuts for animating with these software packages

To achieve spectacular animations, you do not need complex resources. You can recreate frame-by-frame animation using a couple of tricks to make your design process a lot easier.

Designer and animator Pablo Cuello (@pablocuello) shares the most common shortcuts in Adobe Animate and Adobe Photoshop to save time when creating effective animation work.

Essential Adobe Photoshop shortcuts for animation

Note: Use CTRL in Windows and Command on Mac

Draw

- B → Brush tool
- E → Eraser
- R → Rotate Canvas

Transform

- Command / Ctrl + A → Select all
- Command / Ctrl + D → Deselect all
- M → Marquee
- L → Lasso
- Command / Ctrl + X → Cut
- Command / Ctrl + C → Copy
- Command / Ctrl + Shift + V → Paste
- Command / Ctrl + E → Merge down

Color

- I → Eyedrop
- X → Swap colors
- D → Default colors (B&W)
- Command / Ctrl + Delete → Fill with background
- 0-9 → Set layer opacity

Essential Adobe Animate Shortcuts

Draw

- B → Brush
- Y → Pencil
- P → Pen
- E → Eraser

Transform

- V → Select
- A → Subselect
- Q → Transform
- Shift + Spacebar → Rotate canvas

Timeline

- F5 → Extend frame
- F6 → Add keyframe
- F7 → Add blank keyframe
- Shift + F5 → Delete frame
- Shift + F6 → Delete keyframe

Playback

- Enter → Play
- < → Previous frame
- > → Next frame

If you want to know more about Pablo's work, sign up for his course Creating Loop Animation Stories and learn to create frame by frame character animations with simple designs.

English version by @acesarato.

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- 5 Free Tutorials to Master After Effects
- Pioneers of Animation: Before Mickey Mouse
- 5 Loop Animation Styles That Will Inspire You