Keyboard and layout shortcuts for Create, the Media Console's canvas editor, and a few behaviors that are easier to use once you know why they work the way they do.
01Keyboard shortcuts in Create
Modifier shortcuts use Command on macOS and Control on Windows and Linux.
| Action | Keys | |---|---| | Save the project | ⌘S | | Open a project | ⌘O | | Export | ⌘E | | Duplicate the selected layer | ⌘J | | Undo / redo | ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z | | Paste from the clipboard | ⌘V | | Select all | ⌘A | | Deselect | ⌘D | | Invert the selection | ⇧⌘I | | Fit the canvas to the window | ⌘0 | | Zoom in / out | ⌘+ / ⌘- | | Swap foreground and background colors | X |
The single-key tool shortcuts follow the conventions most editors share: V move, M marquee, L lasso, W wand, C crop, I eyedropper, B brush, E eraser, G gradient, T text, U shape, H hand, Z zoom.
The shortcuts that would fight a text field give way to it. While your cursor is in an input, ⌘Z undoes your typing, ⌘A selects the text you are editing, ⌘V pastes into the field, and the single-key tool shortcuts do not fire at all. Save, open, export, and zoom stay active everywhere, because they never conflict with typing.
02Backspace does two different things on purpose
With an active selection, Backspace or Delete clears the pixels inside it. With no selection, the same key deletes the selected layer. The selection always takes precedence, which is the behavior most editors settled on, and it is the one place where glancing at whether a selection is up before pressing the key saves an undo.
Tool shortcuts also refuse to arm a tool that has not been built yet. Pressing that key does nothing rather than silently switching you to a tool that cannot paint, so if a key seems dead, the tool is not available rather than the shortcut being broken.
03Why Command-plus does not zoom the page
Create claims ⌘+, ⌘-, and ⌘0 in every state, including while a dialog is open. Browser page zoom rescales the whole viewport underneath a fixed canvas pan, which reads as the artwork drifting away from where you left it. The editor's own zoom is anchored instead, so ⌘0 fits the canvas and the stepped zoom keeps your position.
04Give the layer list room
The right rail is built around one principle: layers are visible all the time and take the full height, while everything else earns its space on demand. Adjustments, the color picker, history, and the histogram live together in a collapsible accessory tray at the bottom of that rail, showing one at a time.
If you are doing layer-heavy work, keep the tray closed. If you are grading or painting, open it to the tab you need and close it again. Rail state is a preference the Console remembers, so setting it once is enough.
05Find work by what it is, not by which tool made it
The Projects surface lists your saved sessions across every live creative tool in one place — Studio, Create, Motion, Agency, Social, and Stream — with search, a per-tool filter, and sort by date or name. It is faster than opening each tool in turn to remember where something lives, and opening an entry takes you straight back into the right tool.