If you spend a lot of time in Photoshop—we’re talking all of your working hours pushing pixels—you’ve undoubtedly mastered countless shortcuts to streamline your workflow, and are always on the hunt for more. If you can spare a little room on your desk, this tiny keyboard puts some of the most oft-used tools on Photoshop’s toolbar under your fingertips.
Created by Etsy seller 3dDecors, the keyboard includes 26 keys providing quick access to Photoshop’s selection tools, masking tools, undo, redo, and even some basic file handling. The keyboard also includes a pair of knobs for quickly adjusting settings like the opacity of a layer, or the size of the currently selected brush, but because the Photoshop user interface has grown to be highly adaptable to every user’s needs, the default functions of this keyboard can be changed or tweaked to suit a specific workflow.
If you’re already well versed in Photoshop you’ve probably noticed the tiny keypad duplicates keyboard shortcuts that Photoshop already includes by default, such as holding the space bar to temporarily activate the Hand tool for panning large documents. As a result, Photoshop veterans might need some time to retrain their muscle memory to reach for this accessory instead of the full keyboard they’re already used to. But for amateurs, it should help reduce the Photoshop learning curve, as it’s easy to tell which of these dedicated keys activate which tool. (And building the muscle memory to do it blind should be more simple than hotkeys.)
At $US100 ($156) (or $US90 ($141) without the custom silk-screened Photoshop keycaps) the keyboard isn’t as cheap as buying a set of shortcut decals to slap over your existing keyboard, but since it easily connects to a PC over USB, you can plug it into any machine running Photoshop, even one you’re only temporarily using, and continue on with your familiar workflow.