From the course: Wacom Tablet: Customizing ExpressKeys

ExpressKey shortcuts for drawing and photo programs

From the course: Wacom Tablet: Customizing ExpressKeys

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ExpressKey shortcuts for drawing and photo programs

- When you draw or adjust images on a Wacom the ExpressKey, touch strip, and on-screen control shortcuts save a huge amount of time. (dramatic music) And if you have access to the sample files you can print those out. You can also pause this video to see them here. These shortcuts can be set as ExpressKeys or on-screen controls, unless I suggest otherwise. And if you have the Wacom Remote you can program more of these suggestions than you can with just the few ExpressKeys on your device. Now Wacom has already provided three great sets of on-screen controls, the Brushes, Drawing, and Photoshop Coloring, to help you directly with Photoshop. But I have a few other great tips I love to use when I work in Photoshop. One of the things I love is the Multiple Undo. The default undo that's on the ExpressKeys just takes you back one step. But if you set up this you can go back as many steps as you want. Obviously the Space key allows you to move, that's a great one to put onto your pen actually. Bring up your Lasso, zooming your image to fit, bring up your Brush Tool or your Eraser Tool, those are really handy on the side under your thumb as you're working. If you're flipping back and forth you don't have to flip your pen around if you don't want. You may wanna set your ExpressKeys to bring up the three on-screen controls I mentioned, Brush Panel, your Photoshop Coloring, and Photoshop Drawing. So you have instant access to them. And you can leave them on your screen as you work if you want. Being able to bring up a new layer quickly is always helpful. And then some of your other tools, like your Pencil Tool and your Paint Bucket and your Blur and your Healing Brush. You may wanna keep those, along with your Brush Tool and your Eraser, all together, so that it's one area of your ExpressKeys. And then there are the ones that I use all the time, Color Balance, Hue and Saturation, and the Levels. Those are also great to have instant access to. Now I like to change the buttons on my pen. One of the buttons to the Alt key, so that as I'm working I can just click the button and then quickly select any other color that's on my image. And using the Space key. So if I just click down on that button I instantly have my hand to move my image around. I also tend to use my Touch Slider or a Touch Ring quite a bit. So I can set up to make my Brush harder or softer. Of course, there's the defaults that I don't show here that are already in every Wacom unit on making my Brush bigger or smaller. But I also like to be able to move my image around. So if any of my arrow keys, up, down, left, or right, can be set to your sliders. And if you wanna be able to move faster you can do Shift + arrow up, Shift + arrow left, or whatever, and it moves 10 pixels at a time. So on your slider you really move across your image quickly. Now many of the other popular graphic and illustration programs has similar shortcuts. So let's take a look at Corel Painter. So you notice that the Eraser shortcut is different, the Brush is the same, the Pan is the same. Being able to do really quick straight lines is fantastic. Select All is the same. But they also have really great Perspective Guides and the Perspective Toggle, so those are really nice to be able to pull up very quickly. Another great drawing software I like to use is Sketchbook Pro. Some of these shortcuts you actually have to hold on them in order for them to work. It's easy enough. So if you wanna draw a straight line you just hold down your Shift and move your pen and so on. Dynamic Brush Resizing is fantastic. If you hold down your B key or your ExpressKey set to that just move your Brush across the screen and it'll get larger and smaller. Of course, swapping back and forth between your current and your previous Brush is great or starting new layers. Moving, sizing. And then hiding your tools and going to full screen is also really great if you want more room on your screen to be able to draw with. Just like in Photoshop, being able to quickly pick up a color as you're drawing it's fantastic to put your Alt modifier onto your pen. And I tend to move back and forth between different images when I'm working in this software as well, so putting onto your slider page up and page down to be able to scroll through your images is also really handy. I work a lot in storyboarding, so my favorite drawing program to storyboard with is Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. And these shortcuts help me tremendously. So there's Dynamic Brush sizing here, but this uses the letter O, so it's a little bit different than some of the other softwares. Resetting my view, 'cause I'll move in and out really quickly and if I'm twisting around just a quick Shift + M or using a keyboard shortcut ExpressKey takes me right back to seeing my image full screen. The Onion Skin on and off, so I can see shadows of the drawings from the previous and next frames. Zooming in and zooming out. What zooms in and zooms out depending on what is highlighted. So if you're working in a drawing area zooming in and out, whether it's a shortcut or using your keyboard, just zooms in and out that area. If I'm working on my timeline I'll zoom in and out of my timeline with the exact same keys. The transform has to do with moving my layers around on my screen. So it's basically limited animation. If I wanna get rid of them I can reset the transform and it gets rid of my motions. Of course, then there's bringing up Brush Tools. And you'll notice here some of these settings are almost the same as in Photoshop, except we need the Alt modifier with them. And of course, some of the other tools. Like flipping horizontal and flipping vertical. I would wanna keep those next to each other on my ExpressKeys. Same thing with my Selection Tool, Cutter Tool, things like that. I'm gonna wanna keep all those together, 'cause it makes sense and it's easier to remember. Again, I like to use my Color Picker as a button on my pen. So rather than just Alt like in Photoshop, here's it's Alt + D in Storyboard Pro. And because I'm working on a timeline and telling a story there are a lot of images. So I'm gonna go between next panel and previous panel a lot. So having that on my slider to go back and forth through my project is very handy. And then being able to rotate the image as I'm drawing on it, so I can just keep my finger there and rotate clockwise and counterclockwise on my slider and that also helps tremendously as I work. Now everyone works a little differently, so set up your ExpressKey shortcuts to make use of the tools you use most often. And if you use a graphic software I didn't cover here use these shortcuts as examples to find your software shortcuts. It's usually as simple as pulling down the drop menus and the shortcuts are listed by each option. (fly buzzing) - [Fly] Help me.

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