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[Brad Blackman]

Some time ago (last November, I think) I had with the idea to create some uber cheat sheets for using the Adobe apps, being inspired by a co-worker who was a recent college grad who wasn't familiar with all the keyboard shortcuts in InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

Except it's a real pain and time-sink to create a big honkin' table with every single shortcut, from scratch.

A few weeks ago, I discovered that you can export all the shortcuts to a .txt or .html file. Bingo! Now I finally have the means to create the killer cheat sheets which have really been there all along under my nose. So during some downtime this morning, I simply did a cut and paste from the exported files and formatted it nicely in InDesign, and made PDFs of the documents.

So, here's my request: would you test drive these for a few days, and let me know what you think? There's a possibility I'll jazz them up somehow (they're pretty plain) or number the pages or something. Anyway, let me know how these work for you. Chances are I'll probably post them on Mysterious Flame (once it gets back online).

[Jamie Phelps]

They look fine, but I think they could be refined considerable. A cheatsheet should be one page IMHO. The most important and most common functions only should be included.

[Brad Blackman]

They look fine, but I think they could be refined considerable. A cheatsheet should be one page IMHO. The most important and most common functions only should be included.

Good point. I may try to develop a more condensed version of each, limited to maybe 2 pages. Do you think it's worth keeping the basic stuff on there like Cmd+C for copy and Cmd+P for print? I might put that on a "(Mostly) Universal Mac Keyboard Shortcuts" list, since it's pretty much universal across nearly all apps.

[Jamie Phelps]

I think that what might be incredibly useful is a CS3 cheat sheet rather than one for each app since certain keyboard shortcuts are consistent like the Text tool or Selection tool. Then, make notes of where specific differences and maybe boxes set off for each app's unique aspects. This is obviously more trouble than dumping the keyboard shortcuts but it would be a huge asset to CS3 users everywhere.

[Brad Blackman]

One thing I have to point out is that everybody uses the apps differently. Someone laying out an extensive technical catalog for a tractor supply company is going to use things like the tables a lot more than someone laying out out an ad for perfume. Since people use them differently and for different reasons, they may need to learn different shortcuts.