Sue recently added a great article sharing her favorite keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop and we thought it would be a good idea to highlight some handy keyboard shortcuts for GIMP users too. There are a large number of default keyboard shortcuts in GIMP and I've previously covered all the shortcuts for the Tools palette. You can even set up your own keyboard shortcuts using GIMP's shortcut editor or making use of GIMP dynamic keyboard shortcuts.
These are just a selection of some useful keyboard shortcuts that can help you to speed up your workflow.
I should mention that I have personally experienced problems with shortcuts that combine the Shift and Ctrl keys, as the Shift key appears to be ignored when the Ctrl key is also pressed. This may be in some way connected to the fact that I use a Spanish keyboard and to get around this, I have just set my own shortcuts using GIMP's shortcut editor, as mentioned above.
Spacebar for Document Panning
When you're zoomed in a little on an image, it can be slow using the scroll bars to the right and bottom of the window to pan around the image. However, you only have to hold down the space bar and the cursor will change to the move cursor and you can click your mouse button and drag the image within the window to pan to a different part of the image. Also don't forget the Display Navigation palette if you want a better sense of the overall context of the part of the image that you're currently working on.
Note: This option can be turned off or set to Switch to the Move Tool instead in the Image Windows section of GIMP Preferences.
Zooming In and Out
These are shortcuts that every GIMP user should get into the habit of using to help speed up the way that you work with your images. Also remember that if you have the Display Navigation palette open, this offers another quick way to zoom and navigate an image without going to the View menu or switching to the Zoom Tool.
- Press the + key to zoom in in increments.
- Press the - key to zoom out in increments
- Press the 1 key to zoom in to 100%, ie one pixel in your image matches one pixel on your monitor
- Press Shift+Ctrl+E to fit the image to the window
Deselect
GIMP offers a strong range of selection tools, however once you've finished working with a selection, you'll want to deselect it. Rather than going Select > None to remove the marching ants outline, you can press Shift+Ctrl+A. You should note that matching ants can also denote a floating selection and in that case this will not have any effect. In that case you should either add a new layer to which the selection will be anchored, or go Layer > Anchor Layer (Ctrl+H) to merge it with the next layer down.
Fill Shortcuts
You'll often find yourself wanting to add a solid fill to a layer or a selection and you can quickly do this from the keyboard rather than going to the Edit menu.
- Press Ctrl+, to fill with the foreground color
- Press Ctrl+. to fill with the background color
Default Colors
By default, GIMP sets the foreground color to black and the background color to white and it can be surprising how often you want to use these two colors. To reset these colors quickly, just press the D key. Also you can easily swap the foreground and background colors by pressing the X key.