Keyboard shortcuts and how to remap them

Every menu command, every tool in the toolbox, and most keys that tools respond to on the canvas can be rebound. This page lists the default shortcuts and explains how to change them. If you have changed a shortcut, the tooltips on toolbar buttons and tool buttons show your key, not the default.

On macOS, shortcuts listed here with Ctrl use ⌘ Command instead. A few alternate shortcuts keep the Control key on macOS: Ctrl+Y (Redo), Ctrl+D (Deselect All), Ctrl+Alt+X (Auto Crop) and Ctrl+Alt+A (Save All).

Changing a shortcut

Open the Keyboard Shortcuts window in one of these ways:

• Help > Keyboard Shortcuts
• Ctrl+,
• Edit > Settings…, then the Keyboard tab, then Keyboard Shortcuts…

The window has one tab per group: Tools, Tool Specific, Layers, File, Edit, View, Image, Adjustments, Effects, Window and Help. The search box at the top searches every tab at once. Type part of a command name, or put a key combination in quotes, such as "ctrl-A", to find what a key is bound to.

To rebind a command:

1. Click the shortcut button next to the command. It changes to Press keys….
2. Press the new key combination.
3. Click OK to apply your changes, or Cancel to discard them.

While a button shows Press keys…:

• Esc cancels and keeps the old key.
• Clicking another shortcut button, or OK, without pressing a key sets the shortcut to None. This is how you remove a shortcut.

The Reset to default button (an undo arrow) at the end of each row puts that shortcut back to its default. Reset All to Defaults, in the window’s title bar, resets every command, tool, and tool-specific key after asking you to confirm.

Some commands have more than one default shortcut. Each extra shortcut has its own row, labelled (Alternate), so you can change one without losing the other. For example, Deselect All and Deselect All (Alternate) are Ctrl+Shift+A and Ctrl+D.

Duplicate shortcuts

If two commands share a key, both rows turn red and get a * marker. Hover over either one to see Duplicated. Rebind one of them so the key does one thing.

Duplicates are allowed on the Tools and Tool Specific tabs. Several tools can share a key, and pressing the key again moves to the next of them. Tool-specific keys only apply while their tool is active, so the same key can mean different things in different tools. If you give two keys in the same tool group the same binding, the other one goes back to its default.

By default, Ctrl+Shift+G is assigned to both View > Show Grid and the Black and White adjustment, so both rows show as duplicated when you first open the window. Rebind one of them if you use both.

Where custom shortcuts are saved

When you click OK, Impasto saves your changed shortcuts to keyboard-shortcuts.json in its settings folder:

The file only lists the shortcuts you have changed. It is plain JSON, so you can copy it to another computer or edit it by hand while Impasto is closed. If the file is missing or can’t be read, Impasto starts with the default shortcuts. Deleting the file and restarting Impasto restores every default.

Your shortcuts are also included when you use Edit > Settings… > Backup > Export Settings…. When you import a settings file that contains shortcuts, Impasto asks whether to import them or to Keep Mine, because importing replaces your current keyboard-shortcuts.json.

Tools

Press a tool’s key to switch to it. Keys typed into a text box, or into text you are editing with the Text tool, go there instead. Where several tools share a key, press it again to cycle through them. See the toolbox overview for what each tool does.

File

Quit and the Keyboard Shortcuts window’s own shortcut, Ctrl+,, are not listed in the Keyboard Shortcuts window, so you can’t change them there.

Edit

Paste Alternate pastes onto a new layer. If you turn on Paste external images onto a new layer by default in Edit > Settings… > Keyboard, the two swap: Paste goes to a new layer and Paste Alternate pastes onto the current layer.

Esc finishes any text or shape you are editing before it deselects. With the pointer over the canvas, the Text and Lasso Select tools use the first press to finish typing or cancel the outline. If you deselect by accident, Ctrl+Z brings the selection back.

View

See Canvas and zoom and Snapping and guides.

Image

Layers

Solo Layer shows only one layer, counting up from the bottom layer. Press the same shortcut again to show all layers. See Layers and objects.

Adjustments

Effects have no default shortcuts. You can give any effect one from the Effects tab.

Window and Help

The document-switching keys are on the Tool Specific tab, under Window.

Tool-specific keys

These keys only work while the matching tool is active. They are on the Tool Specific tab, grouped by the names shown in the first column.

General and brushes

Selection and moving

Each nudge direction is a separate binding, so you can change them one by one.

Text tool

See the Text tool.

Gradient and shape tools

See Shape tools.