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A great method for reducing the number of clicking and mousing around you are
going to have to do inside the application everyday is to learn and memorize the
tool shortcuts, the letters that are assigned to every single tool.
So you can just tap a letter on the keyboard and switch to the tool that
you're thinking about. You can see over here on the left is the Default
tools panel arrangement, arranged vertically in a single column, and
every tool has a name and of course, the important ones have a letter
assigned to them. So, if I hover over a tool and pause for a
second, I will get a little tooltip telling me the name of the tool
and the letter that's been assigned to that. So we're just going to run through these very
quickly. V is the current tool I'm on, the Selection
tool. If I press the letter A on my keyboard-- And
I'm not holding any other modifier keys down. Just type in a letter. A is the Direct Selection
tool, P is the Pen tool, T is the Type tool, so
a lot of these make sense. That's good. N is the Pencil tool, a little annunciation
there in the letter. F is the Rectangular Frame tool, so F for
frame. M for the Rectangle tool. Kind of matching
Photoshop's M for Rectangular Marque tool. So, we can see between the Applications Adobe
tries to make them match as much as possible. L is the Ellipse tool or Elliptical Frame
tool. R is Rotate, S is Scale, C is Scissors, E
is the Free Transform tool, G is Gradient, I is the Eyedropper and of course,
the standard H and Z for the Hand tool and the Zoom tool.
Again, learn those tool shortcuts if you haven't already.
It really will make you a lot faster inside InDesign.