8 Keyboard Shortcuts to Clip Studio Paint Happiness
I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts and think they’re essential for becoming a more fluent user of Clip Studio Paint. They make everything quicker and easier, once you get the hang of them.
How To Use Them
There are dozens of keys and key combinations you can use to do various things in Clip Studio Paint.
Don’t try to learn them all at once. If you’re solely using your stylus or mouse right now, try to introduce one shortcut at a time. Once your muscle memory kicks in on that, go to the next tool you find yourself using the most. Learn that shortcut.
The first few go pretty quickly. Some will be a little more troublesome, particularly the ones where the key doesn’t seem to have anything to do with describing the tool.
Which Shortcuts To Use
As a quick jumpstart in this effort, here are the eight keyboard shortcuts I find myself using the most, as someone who does pen and ink word predominantly in Clip Studio Pain.
For Drawing:
- P – Pen and Pencil. Cycles between the two as you hit the key.
- B – Brush. Cycles through Brush, Airbrush, and Decorations.
For Coloring:
- G – Fill an area/Bucket tool (Cycles through with the Gradient Tool, which I ignore)
- L – Lasso
For Adding the Words:
- T – Text. Remembers the text tool you were using last, like word balloons, tails, or text.
For Fixing Many of My Mistakes:
- E – Eraser
- CMD-SHIFT-T – Transform. Lets you move an area you just lassoed, or scale it up and down.
- CMD-Z – Undo. Didn’t do it right the first time? Undo it and try again. Essential in inking.
How to Overrule Shortcuts
These are the default shortcuts when CSP is installed in your computer. You can overrule most of them in the settings menu to anything you want.
For example, I took off the keyboard shortcut for the Decorations when you hit “B”. I use those so infrequently that it’s not worth having a key set aside for it. I’ll point and click, thanks.
The place to change the shortcuts is the “Shortcut Settings” menu, which you can find on a Mac in the upper left corner of your screen under the “CLIP STUDIO PAINT” dropdown.
There is a shortcut for the shortcuts. It’ll take four fingers, though: Shift-CMD-OPTION-K. (Of course.)
From there, just drill down on the lists until you find what you’re looking for. Double click in the area to the right of the option you want to make a shortcut to, and type your new one in.
When you’re ready to start making changes to stock Clip Studio Paint, it’s an excellent place to lose a few minutes exploring.
I never thought to remove the decorations from the brushes! Also, worth looking into if you have the newer Wacoms with the radial menus. I spent a few minutes adding my favourite tools to those menus and its shaved valuable time off of my work flow.
On the off chance that somebody will see this, two years later: Is it possible to switch the order of the tools, when you have two tools on the same key?
I would strongly prefer to have P switch to Pencil first, and Pen second. The only thing I could think of was to delete the shortcut for both of the tools, and then add it again, first for Pencil, and then for Pen, but it didn’t work, Pen is still first.
I know I can simply give one of them a different shortcut altogether, but P is in a very convenient spot on the keyboard…
Hi J – I’m still here, I promise. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for this one. I went into Shortcut Settings and played with things there a little bit, but nothing made any difference. It’s a stumper. I’d be curious to see if anyone else has any ideas. Maybe they’ll post a reply here.
Thanks a lot for the reply! For now, I think I’ll set up a new shortcut for the Real Pencil tool, which is the one I use the most, and see if I start using it or if I just keep reaching for the P key. It looks like most of the number keys are free, so I’ll try 9 which is fairly close on the keyboard.