Quick Export in Photoshop CC 2015

Amongst the banner features announced for Photoshop CC 2015, there are a few small niceties that have been added too. My favourite so far is “Quick Export as PNG”.

Before now I had an action that would duplicate my selected layer or group to a new document, trim the transparent space on all sides and save it as a PNG to my desktop. But no more.

There are 2 different ways you can use Quick Export. Either by going to “File” → “Export” → “Quick Export as PNG” if you want to export the whole document or by right clicking on a layer or group and selecting “Quick Export as PNG” from the menu.

You can of course set a keyboard shortcut for both of these. To export the whole document, open up the keyboard shortcuts window (“Edit” → “Keyboard Shortcuts…”) and under “Shortcuts For: Application Menus” toggle “File” then “Export>” and click on “Quick Export as PNG” to set your shortcut. For layer and group exporting, go to “Shortcuts For: Panel Menus”, toggle “Layers” and click on “Quick Export as PNG” to set your shortcut. I like Control + Command + E for the former and Control + Shift + Command + E for the latter.

Bonus tip: For years now I’ve had my Caps Lock modifier key set to be Control instead. It makes a drastic improvement to the speed and comfort of using these sorts of shortcuts. You can change it by going to “Keyboard” → “Modifier Keys…” in the System Preferences.