Touch shortcuts and gestures

Learn more about touch shortcuts and gestures to save time while you work with Photoshop on your iPad.

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Work with touch shortcuts

Use the touch shortcuts to quickly access the alternate actions of a selected tool in Photoshop on your iPad. You can tap and drag the touch shortcut to move it across your canvas. For each selected tool, the touch shortcut offers upto two alternate actions. Keep the touch shortcut pressed down the entire time you want to use the alternate behavior of a selected tool. A blue indicator appears on the upper right side of the canvas to notify you about the activated state of the touch shortcut.

For example, while using the Brush tool you can activate the primary touch shortcut to access the Eraser version of your Brush, and activate the secondary touch shortcut to switch to the Eyedropper tool.

Touch shortcut in primary state
Using the Primary Touch Shortcut to activate the Eraser version of the Brush tool.

Using primary touch shortcut: Tap and hold the center of the touch shortcut with your other hand to activate the primary action of the selected tool.

Touch shortcut in secondary state
Using the Secondary Touch Shortcut to activate the Eyedropper tool with the Brush tool selected.

Using secondary touch shortcut: Tap and slide to the outer edge of the touch shortcut with your other hand to activate the secondary action of the selected tool.

The Brush tool is just one of the many tools you can use with the Touch shortcut. To access a list of tools that work with touch shortcuts in Photoshop on your iPad from within the app, navigate to Help () > View touch shortcuts, or see the table below:

Icon Tool Primary Touch Shortcut Secondary Touch Shortcut
Move Move on the X/Y axis Duplicate

Scale Scale unproportionally Scale from center
  Rotate Snap to 15 degrees None
Lasso Add to or Subtract from selection None
Quick select Add to or Subtract from selection None
Rectangular marquee Select with a fixed ratio Select from the center with a fixed ratio
Elliptical marquee Select with circle Select from the center with a circle
Brush Eraser Eyedropper
Clone stamp Set source  None
Crop Crop proportionally Crop proportionally from the center
Tap Layer Enter multi-select mode None
Tap Layer Group  Enter multi-select mode None

Use gestures

Quickly perform helpful common actions using gestures to interact with the touch-based user interface of Photoshop on the iPad. To access a list of touch gestures that you can use in Photoshop on your iPad from within the app, navigate to Help () > View gestures, or see the table below:

Illustration

Gesture 

Action 

2 finger tap

Undo

3 finger tap

Redo

Hold and drag the grabber at the top of the floating tool panel to move it around the canvas

Move tool options

Double-tap or long-press icons that have triangles on the bottom right to reveal more tool options

Reveal more options

2 finger drag to pan

Pan canvas

Double-tap

View at 100% 

Note:

Adobe is working to add more touch shortcuts and gestures to Photoshop on the iPad in future releases.

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