Illustrator's Most Handy Keyboard Shortcuts Part I

Although Illustrator shares most of its commands with Photoshop because it also belongs to the Adobe family, the truth is that there are significant differences. Perhaps due to the fact that Illustrator is an application that is focused on the world of drawing and generally more laborious jobs, keyboard shortcuts are very useful. It may be difficult to memorize all the commands at first, but with time and a little practice you will find that using them will save you a good deal of time. Optimizing our organization is very important, remember that time is money.

In the following list you will find the most practical shortcuts for any version of this application. Remember that the Mac equivalent of Ctrl is Cmd.

Tool selection:

• Workspace Shift+O
• Selection V
• Magic wand Y
• Bow Q
• Feather P
• Smudge brush Shift+B
• Add anchor point + (more)
• Delete anchor point  - (less)
• Convert anchor point Shift+C
• Text T
• Rectangle M
• Ellipse L
• Brush B
• Pencil N
• Rotate R
• Reflection O
• Scale S
• Deform Shift+R
• Width Shift+W
• Free transformation E
• Mesh U
• Degraded G
• Dropper I
• Fusion W 
• Interactive paint bucket Shift+L
• Draft Shift+E
• Scissors C
• Bro H
• Zoom Z

See illustrations:

• Increase to 100% Double click on the zoom tool.
• Go from horizontal guides to vertical guides Alt / Option + drag guide
• Show or hide artboards Ctrl / Cmd + Alt / Option + R
• Exit full screen mode I

To draw:

• Move a shape while drawing: Space bar + mouse drag.
• Draw a shape from the center alt / option + drag
• Join two or more paths: Path selection + Ctrl / Cmd + J

Draw in perspective:

• Perspective grid Shift+T
• Perspective selection Shift+V
• Change perspective planes: We must choose the tool of perspective selection + 1 (left grid) / 2 (horizontal grid) / 3 (right grid) / 4 (no grid)
• Copy objects in perspective Ctrl / Cmd + Alt + drag mouse

Paint objects:

• Toggle between fill and stroke X
• Set the default stroke and fill D
• Swap fill and stroke Shift+X
• Gradient fill mode > /. (point on Mac)
• Reduce brush size [
• Increase brush size ]
• Set opacity in string brush: number keys (1-0). The 1 key will increase our opacity by 10% and the number 0 by 100%.