Plaxinator said:
I have Photoshop 7. I'm not sure if I have an elements one, I don't think so but I inherited a load of disks off my dad so I'll have a rummage and see what's there. There might be an ancient version or demo version somewhere.
Elements is the more "user friendly" version of Ps although I'm often left frustrated due to some of the advanced features that I'm used to using being watered down. That said though it is what I tend to use these days and only switch to my old copy of Photoshop 7/Illustrator 9 when I'm doing font work.
Most of the tutorials that are out there are for the more modern Creative Suite versions of Ps but they're often still usable. The latest versions have some superb features for speeding up the work flow of retouching.
A couple of standard defacto shortcut keys are as follows
Zoom control
CTRL + : Zoom in
CTRL - : Zoom out
CTRL 0 : Fit to work space
Workspace control
Tab : cycle menus on/off
F : cycle full screen modes
CTRL Shift N : create new layer
Tools
Most can be gleaned by hovering the mouse over the button
X : switches between foreground and background colours (useful when masking)
D : defaults foreground and background colours to black and white
[ : decrease brush size
] : increase brush size
CTRL A : select all
CTRL D : deselect all
One final thing to note is that combinations of CTRL, ALT and Shift allow quick access to other features when a tool is selected. For example the Move tool (V) becomes a copy tool when the ALT key is held.
Now everyone is fast asleep I'll carry on with what I was doing.
