16 Shortcuts

Ch. 16 ⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts & Command Palette

What you'll learn: How to find any command instantly via the Command Palette, and the most important shortcuts grouped by activity.

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Command Palette — 200+ Commands at Your Fingertips

🎯 Goal: Access any command instantly.

Press ? to open the Command Palette. Start typing — DRAW does fuzzy-matching across command names so you can type flip to find both Flip Horizontal and Flip Canvas Vertical. Each match shows its hotkey on the right; arrow keys to highlight, Enter to run.

Use Help → Cheat Sheet for Quick Reference Mode, which lists every command in the application without filtering — handy for learning what's available.

The Palette is grouped into categories that match the menus:

• Tools
• File
• Edit
• View
• Color
• Brush
• Layer
• Canvas
• Assist
• Grid
• Symmetry
• Select
• Help
• Image
• Audio

Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

🎯 Goal: Memorize the essential shortcuts.

The full, authoritative list is in CHEATSHEET.md at the repository root. Below are the essentials — what you'll use thousands of times a session.

Tool selection (single key)

Key	Tool
B	Brush
D	Dot
L	Line
R	Rectangle (Shift+R filled)
C	Ellipse (Shift+C filled)
P	Polygon (Shift+P filled)
F	Fill
K	Spray
I	Picker
E	Eraser
M	Marquee
W	Wand
V	Move
Z	Zoom
T	Text

Essential combos

Combo	Action
Ctrl+S / Ctrl+O / Ctrl+N	Save / Open / New
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Undo / Redo
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V	Copy / Cut / Paste
Ctrl+A / Ctrl+D / Ctrl+E	Select All / Deselect / Clear
Ctrl+L	Toggle Layer Panel
[ / ]	Brush Size − / +
\	Brush Shape (circle ↔ square)
X	Swap FG / BG
0–9	Paint Opacity 100% / 10–90%
' ; . ,	Grid controls
F4–F9, F11	Panel and mode toggles
Tab	Toggle Toolbar
?	Command Palette

For everything else, use the Command Palette or read the chapter where the feature is introduced.

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➡️ Next: Chapter 17 — Undo, Redo & History