Three Under-Used Apple Keyboard Shortcuts

Invert Your Screen
Control – Option – Command – 8

It’s just awful to read long lines of white copy on a black background. It’s hard on your eyes and just plain painful to read anything longer than a headline. Apple Universal Access to the rescue. Press Control – Option – Command – 8 to invert your screen colors and read strain free. This is also a great prank to play on office mates with no knowledge of this feature

Zoom In
Control and scroll with your mouse wheel

Sometimes we need to zoom in to a website to display a photo or text for everyone to read. This is especially helpful during a presentation, or watching small videos online. Press Control and scroll with your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of your screen.

Cropped Screen Grab to Clipboard
Shift – Control – Command – 4

I use this technique all the time when making blog posts. When making a screen grab, it’s rare that I need the entire screen. More often than not, I just want a specific part. It’s also never the case for me that the screen grab is perfect as is. It usually requires a little Photoshop love before its ready for my blog or for work. Pressing Shift – Control – Command – 4 brings up a cross-hair to select the part of the screen that you need. Instead of making a file on your desktop, the selected image gets “pasted” automatically in to your clipboard. I then open up photoshop and hit Comand – N to make a new canvas. This canvas will be the exact dimensions as the clipping I just made. Once the canvas is open, just hit Command – V to paste the screen shot into Photoshop.