Whoever created keyboard shortcuts is a genius.  Shortcuts can be tedious to learn, but once you’ve used them a number of times and they become second-nature, they have the potential to speed your work flow like a monster.

Take the brush tool for instance. In a simple project of masking out a background, you might have to change the softness or size of a brush 50 times. If you have to hit the top menu every time you need to make a change, it’s a pretty tedious exercise.

I’ve always appreciated being able to use the bracket keys to change brush size and softness…

The left bracket “[" makes your brush smaller, while the "]” will make a brush tip larger. Add the shift key to the bracket keys and you can make the edge of your brush harder or softer. But this can still take some time during projects when you are frequently altering brush size and softness.

So, I was thrilled to see that the designers of Photoshop CS4 took this into account and created a method of altering your brush that’s wicked fast and intuitive.

Select your brush tool

Change the size of the brush: Alt + right click mouse + drag left and right

Change softness of brush: Alt + Shift + right click + drag left and right

Find some more time savers here: Best 50 Photoshop CS4 Shortcuts

Speed demons unite!

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2. Adding Texture to a Picture In Photoshop (Part 1)
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