Alignment Commands and Keyboard Shortcuts

[Bobby Henderson]

Adobe Illustrator in its stock installation has no keyboard shortcuts for the six alignment commands within the Object>Align menu or the Align palette. It seems like there is a good reason for that. It's pretty difficult to create a logical set of custom keyboard shortcuts for the six alignment commands without causing any conflicts with the huge number of existing keyboard shortcuts.

Some rival applications have stock keyboard shortcuts for the six alignment commands. CorelDRAW uses the L, C, R, T, E & B keys; adding the shift button will distribute objects along the same axes. Nearly all those shortcut keys have other existing designations in Illustrator. In Illustrator I can apply the same keyboard shortcuts within a different keyboard shortcut sets file. Just out of habit I'm trying not to mess with any of the existing shortcuts with Illustrator Defaults.

Attempts to use other combinations with the L-C-R-T-E-B keys, such as Alt or Ctrl, open new cans of worms. Ctrl+C is one of the most commonly used clipboard shortcuts. The Windows OS doesn't like me using the Alt key in conjunction with most of the L-C-R-T-E-B keys; even though the command works a very irritating OS warning sound erupts. My NVidia graphics board took ownership of the Alt+R combo (performance overlay function).  I tried using a combination of Shift+1-6; but they don't work on my notebook (it doesn't have a num lock key).

Does anyone have any good keyboard shortcut "recipes" for the six align functions, shortcuts that work in harmony with the existing Illustrator defaults?

[Simmer1]

Hi,

This is a tricky one. I try to customise my shortcuts by overriding ones which I do not use or need.

It's a trade off really but in the long run if your customised shortcuts save you time, then it's worth it.

Thanks,

Sim

[Bobby Henderson]

That's where I'm kind of stuck. I use a variety of graphics applications, a bunch from Adobe but also applications from Adobe's rivals. When I'm using Illustrator I kind of go into a certain mind-set where all the keyboard shortcuts reside. It can be confusing enough hopping between different graphics applications and trying not to apply the keyboard shortcuts from one application inside another. If I have more than one key-set of keyboard shortcuts just within Illustrator alone that could trip me up just as much. When launching Illustrator I'd have to pull up the keyboard shortcuts dialog box to see which key-set is active.

I think I'm probably just going to have to live with having multiple key sets within Illustrator. I use align and distribute functions pretty heavily in technical drawing work. Those kinds of operations can done so much faster using keyboard shortcuts than constantly mousing back and forth to a bunch of align and distribute icons.

[michelew83603738]

This is tricky. Trying to find shortcuts for just one program. It really comes down to deciding if it is worth re-assigning shortcuts that you don't use within the program because of the problems that you listed - bumping up against other issues. There are a few tools and therefore shortcuts I don't regularly use, so I have assigned my own shortcuts to those. 

[Bobby Henderson]

I don't really want to map all the keyboard shortcuts from a rival application (such as CorelDRAW for instance) over those in Adobe Illustrator. There's a lot of keyboard shortcuts within Illustrator that I really do like. I want Illustrator to still be Illustrator. The challenge is just coming up with something work-able for those six alignment commands.

I'm leaning toward just using Shift plus the L-C-R-T-E-B keys for those six commands and just letting them overwrite the existing assignments within that custom key set. If it creates too many problems I can always select Illustrator Defaults to restore the previous keyboard shortcuts.

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

If I had to set up key combos for aligning that are going to be used pretty heavily, as you stated, and that ideally are not interfering with some existing shortcuts, I would attach importance that they are as simple as possible. That is, one-key shortcuts that can be used with one finger.

Therefore I'd suggest at least considering to create an action set with six simple aligning actions and pilfering six function keys to call them.