Additional resources

Using keyboard shortcuts has several significant benefits for photographic editors, regardless of their skill level. Firstly, they take the pressure off your mouse hand. If every function is performed using only the mouse, you will tire more easily. It can also lead to greater physical strain, which in turn could lead to all sorts of medical issues (such as stiffness, arthritis, and even carpal tunnel problems).

Therefore, using a few keyboard shortcuts will not only help to alleviate the physical stresses of just using one hand to edit images, but they'll also significantly speed up the editing process and make your actions more efficient. Elements has a huge range of possible keyboard shortcuts – far too many for most of us to remember, let alone to use effectively, so to keep things as simple and as practical as possible, here are a few of the most relevant shortcuts for this chapter:

Shortcuts	Description
Ctrl/Cmd + N	Create a new, blank file
Alt...