Hit Those Channels Fast

When you’re in the Curves dialog (Command-M [PC: Control-M]), if you’re charging by the hour, you can certainly travel up to the Channel pop-up menu and choose each individual channel you want to work on, but if you want to do it the fast way, just press Command-1 for Red, Command-2 for Green, and Command-3 for Blue (PC: Control-1, Control-2, etc.). If you need to return to the composite RGB channel, press Command-Tilde (PC: Control-Tilde). By the way, the Tilde key looks like ~, and it lives right above the Tab key on your keyboard. Don’t feel bad. Nobody knows what the Tilde key is. We’re not sure it’s a real symbol at all. We think it was made up so there wouldn’t be an empty space there on your keyboard. Hey, it’s somewhat plausible.