An easy way to change the default application for a file is to right click (Control+Click) a file and hold option while selecting an application from the “Always Open With” menu.

Please note this only changes the default application for that one file–not every file with this type. See our other post for assigning default applications.

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Please bear with us–more content coming soon.

While I was trying to fix a different problem, I stumbled upon a keyboard shortcut that brings up the sound preference pane. Just hit Option+F5. From here, you can adjust the volume of your sound alerts, system output volume and microphone input volume.

There’s usually more than one way to complete a task, there’s the fast way, and the slow way. The slow way to crop a photo from the internet would be to save it to your Downloads folder, open it in preview, then crop it.

The fast way is to hit Shift+Command+4 and take a screenshot of only the section of the picture that you need.

The Dock is the primary method for launching applications in OS X. For me, Quicksilver replaces a lot of what I would normally do with the Dock, but I still find it to be an essential tool for my application needs.

By default, the Dock appears at the bottom of the screen. However, it can be repositioned to either the left or right sides of the screen. To do this, one would usually launch System Preferences from their Applications folder, select the Dock pane, and set the position to either left, bottom, or right. Another common method is to Control-Click on the divider used to resize the Dock, go to “Position,” and select whichever position you want.

MacTips user Alex Hwang submitted an alternative way to move the Dock around. Hold down Shift and then click on the divider and drag the divider across the screen. When you get near the left side, the bottom, or the right side of the screen, the Dock will pop into place there. This is much more convenient than going through a bunch of menus.

We have written many more tips on how to manipulate and customize the Dock to fit your needs and wishes. One of my favorites is a Terminal script for switching Leopard’s “shelf” dock back to a more traditional style. You can find everything else we’ve written about the Dock here.

Thanks to Alex Hwang for submitting this shortcut! Submit a tip to MacTips and maybe we will put it up!

Lately I’ve made it a habit to memorize many of the keyboard shortcuts for manipulating text. These shortcuts can generally be used across any Cocoa application and are great for increasing your productivity.

Download the Text Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet in PDF format.

Do you see any shortcuts that are missing?

After our last tip on quickly switching windows in Photoshop, you all suggested I do more. So I recently found three handy tips that saved me time.

Duplicating Slices with Option

Creating slices can be a pain to make over and over again, thankfully there’s a quicker way. Select a slice with Command+Click then Option+Click to duplicate it. Too easy!

Hold Shift and Change Values in Increments of 10

Any field you can change with your keys (up and down) you can also change in increments of 10 by holding shift. So instead of 70…71…72 it would be 70..80..90.

You can also scroll your mouse wheel to change the value.

Organize Windows with Workspaces

One of the most frustrating aspects of using Photoshop is maintaining all of those tiny windows. Workspaces solve this headache by providing the ability to save and load window locations.

They also come with a couple default workspaces (Basic & Legacy) that work nicely

There you have it, 3 tips for improving productivity in Photoshop.

What do you think of multiple smaller tips like this? Good/Bad?

Way back in 2005 I wrote about quick dictionary lookups using the keyboard. This quickly became one of my favorite tips–but I always had trouble remember the key combination. For some reason Command+Control+D was hard to remember.

You probably know you can also access the dictionary by highlighting a word, control+clicking and selecting “Look Up in Dictionary.”

But this by default brings up the dictionary application:

To make the panel the default method, open Dictionary preferences and select “Open Dictionary panel”

Now you can easily look up a word by highlighting it, control+clicking and selecting “Look Up in Dictionary”:

If you find it frustrating you can’t switch between active windows in Photoshop by pressing Command+Tilde (Command+~), you’re not alone.

Thankfully there’s a few quick shortcuts nearby that accomplish the same thing:

• Command+Shift+Tilde
• Control+Tab
• Control+Tilde

Are there many Photoshop users out there? More or less Photoshop tips?

Font Book is a great way to manage system and user fonts. But it’s also great for deciding which fonts to use.

First select Preview -> Custom or hit Command+3 to enable the custom preview.

Then on the far right pane, enter your text:

Now select the a font and press Up/Down on the keyboard arrows to scroll through each of your fonts.

I often find myself copy-pasting out of online resources when I’m typing research papers. The issue with this is that I have to go back and reformat the text in order to achieve a homogenous font style. Nowadays, this problem is no more.

Reader Luke, recently submitted a tip informing me that if instead of just “Command+C” and then “Command+V”, I were to hit “Command+C” then “Command+Shift+Option+V”, then the copied font will be pasted in the same format and style as the rest of the font.