In this video we're gonna look at some  of the essential shortcuts you need in  terms of dealing with layers. Now with layers panel C down here,  I've working on a final um, image here. And you can see the layers have been built up over time  and there are hundreds of them now. So it's not really practical to go through and try  and remember the names of them all. So to know which layer you're working on. So you need a trick.

The best one  and the one that I use constantly is  that make sure you're on your move tool, okay? And make sure that your move tool is set to layer. Now what will happen is  you're gonna learn a little shortcut. Okay? So we're on some random layer at the moment. I want to click this word that says more.

Now I'm gonna zoom a little bit, select more. What I need to do is hold down the command key, okay,  on a Mac or the control key on the pc. And what you'll notice is that can you see up in the top app  bar, it changes this thing called auto select. It just kind of toggles it on while you need it. Okay, so if I hold down the command key  and I click the word more,  can you see in my layers pan it jumped  to the more, and I can move this around. Then say I wanna move the green box as well.

I'll hold down my command key  and the little auto select toggle comes on. I click on this. And even though it's got some random name  called rectangle two, I can still move it around. Okay, so I can click more, move him across,  click the rectangle, move him across,  hold down, let's make Awesome. And it's just a really easy way  to pick the layers and move them around. And really essential when you are working on such  a layer heavy document.

I'm gonna go to edit, step backwards,  edit step backwards, edit, step backwards. Another useful shortcut is if you've got a really complex  set of layers and they're all on top of each other  and it's really hard to select the one you want. What you can do is, let's pretend for a second that  to see this image in the background here, I wanna select,  say using this little area here, but I can't  because there is a black box in front of it. Okay? So if I use my command click trick,  it's gonna click this rectangle every time. Okay?

Of course I could pick down here,  but that ruins my example. What I can do is if I right click, okay, if I right click,  and if you're on a Mac and you don't have a right click,  you control click. But if you're on a pc, it's easy to right click  and you'll notice that it picks everything in  my little layer order here. So that's the one that I was, that's the black rectangle. Underneath it though is something called layer two,  and that is my little image. Another useful shortcut  that you're gonna need is if you are using say My template  and you are using the column grids, okay?

Um, you need to be able to go to view show guides  and these can be really great when you're lining things up,  but real pain when you're trying to look at things visually. 'cause it kind of ruins the look  of everything with the lines everywhere. So the shortcut for this, if you're on a Mac, it's command  and use the colon key on your keyboard. If you're on a pc, it's com, uh, control and colon  and you toggle these on and off. I do this quite a bit when I'm working with these grids. I want 'em on to line things up  and then I turn it off again when I'm trying  to look at things and see how they line up.