Moving from Photoshop, to Sketch, and back.

Published in

Product Labs

2 min readApr 8, 2015

As designers we are constantly switching between tools and adding plugins/add-ons/libraries to our applications to help supercharge our workflow and efficiency. So what happens when we introduce yet another application into the mix?

Since its release, I’ve been a big fan of Bohemian Coding’s Sketch 3. It has some incredible features that, as a Product Designer, allow me to work more efficiently. However, things weren’t always this way. Like many of my peers I was daunted with the idea of another tool I had to familiarize myself with. Would it really be worth it in the end? How steep would the learning curve be? Would this shiny new tool replace the ones I’ve been using for years? The answer is no. Not completely. In this article, I hope to propose a few ways you can customize your Sketch workflow to help make switching between applications a breeze.

While Sketch has been my “go-to” tool over the past few months, I still find myself inside of Photoshop and Illustrator multiple times throughout any given day. One of the biggest frustrations when I first started working with Sketch was that all of the keyboard commands and shortcuts that I was already familiar with were completely different. So, I changed them to suit my needs.

It’s incredibly easy to create your own application shortcuts within OSX. For a nice breakdown and additional shortcut recommendations head on over to http://sketchshortcuts.com/

Below are some of the main shortcuts that I’ve set up to make switching between Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch a breeze.

Note – These are my own personal preferences that I’ve found useful. Feel free to create the shortcuts that you use most in order to maximize efficiency on your own workflow.

LAYOUT

⌘ + ‘

Show/Hide Grid

⌘ + ;

Show/Hide Smart Guides

⌘ + R

Show/Hide Rulers

⌘ + ⇧ + }

Move To Front

⌘ + }

Forward

⌘ + {

Backward

⌘ + ⇧ + {

Move To Back

TYPE

⌥ + ←

Tighten

⌥ + →

Loosen

⌘ + ⇧ + >

Bigger

⌘ + ⇧ + <

Smaller

BONUS

⌘ + ⌥ + ↓

Collapse Artboards and Groups

While many of these suggestions will help streamline your workflow between apps, it can be a bit of a pain when switching computers or pair designing with a colleague that has their own preferences. In the long run, if you can spare the 10–15min setup time it will make working between these applications much smoother.

Have anything to add? I’d love to hear how you’ve streamlined your workflow between applications. Hit me up on Twitter: