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Command-Option-~(Tilde)

 

I have used this keyboard shortcut several times in my tutorials to load the image luminosity as a selection and a lot of people have been unable to make it work on a Mac system. This is because the Mac OS has this particular keyboard command assigned to another system function. To fix this you can go into the Mac OS System Preferences under the Apple menu. Go to Keyboard and Mouse and click the last tab called Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down and twirl down Keyboard Navigation, then scroll down to ‘Move focus to the window drawer’. Turn this feature off by unchecking the box next to it. Now this keystroke will work inside Photoshop.

4 Comments

  1. Paul Kennedy said on — October 15, 2008 @ 7:17 pm

    I, too, use this keyboard shortcut for the same purpose, but after installing PS CS4 today, I find it doesn’t work. Do you know what shortcut has replaced command+option+tilde in CS4?
    Thanks for the help.

    Paul

  2. Paul Kennedy said on — October 15, 2008 @ 7:36 pm

    I don’t usually answer my own question, but, after some additional experimentation I’ve discovered that the replacement shortcut is command+option+2. Hope that helps someone else, as well.

    Paul

  3. Mary said on — October 22, 2008 @ 12:35 pm

    What is the pc equivalent of Command-Option-~(Tilde)?

    Just a suggestion: when refering to shortcuts, please could you add the pc version to the shortcut too, or the menu option if you don’t feel comfortable talking about pc’s?

    Not everyone uses Mac, you know…
    :(

  4. Jennifer said on — February 9, 2010 @ 7:33 am

    PC is Control+Alt+2. (CS4) Following this tutorial myself and had to convert. :)

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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