Sure, you probably know about command c and command p (copy and paste for the uninitiated), but can you take screenshots and put the computer sleep with just a keystroke? A keyboard shortcut, for those who don’t know, is a combination of keys that when pressed together performs a task that would otherwise require use of the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts enable us to work quickly and efficiently. In no particular order, these are some of my favorite shortcuts:

• Command Shift 4 Turns the cursor into a crosshair for selecting a region to capture in a screenshots. Pressing the space bar immediately after this shortcut turns the cursor into a camera for selecting entire windows to capture.
• Command N The universal “new” command. For example, this creates a new window in Safari, a new message in Mail, and a new playlist in iTunes.
• Command +Increases text size in Mail, iChat. Zooms in on photos in Preview and iPhoto and websites in Safari. Increases font size in TextEdit.
• Command - Decreases text size. Zooms out of photos. Decreases font size.
• Command 0 Returns to the default zoom in Safari and Preview.
• Command ~ Cycles between windows in the active application. For instance, if multiple documents are open in Word this will change the visible one.
• Command Space Opens the Spotlight search box
• Command O The universal “open” command. This will bring up a dialogue to open files in most program and will open files that are selected in Finder.
• Control Shift Eject Puts the computer to sleep.
• Tab Cycles between text-input boxes in Safari. This is useful for quickly filling out a form or accessing the search bar.

Despite substantial out of the box functionality, Macs do not come with much photo editing capability. Sure, iPhoto can crop, adjust contrast, and even retouch minor blemishes, but it cannot change backgrounds, sharpen blur, and place people into group portraits. For advanced editing, professionals turn to Adobe’s Photoshop. The gold standard of photo editing software for the past two decades, Photoshop can be prohibitively expensive for the home user at several hundred dollars a license. Fortunately, there is a free alternative to Photoshop for Mac users. The open source program, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program ), provides much of the Photoshop’s functionality in a similar interface. GIMP can be downloaded at http://www.gimp.org/downloads/. A manual is available at http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/.