When spending most part of the day using the same piece of software, maybe it’s not a bad idea to have a keyboard especially designed for that daily task.
Photoshop and similar image manipulation apps have very complex menus and browsing them in order to find a certain tool may take a while, especially if you’re new at this. There are shortcuts and key combinations for most of these tools, but memorizing all of them is rather difficult. Sorin Neica, the inventor of the Shortcut-S keyboard, figured out that mapping all the tools on a single surface could improve the workflow tremendously.
I’m proud to write about something developed in my country, Transylvania Romania, the homeland of Dracula smart programmers and creative people. Pride aside, I have to admit that a 319-key keyboard with 372 functions, tools and filters could boost productivity a lot. People using image and video manipulation software can now save a lot of time by using a single finger to access a particular function. It is no longer necessary to let go of the mouse in order to type finger-mending key combos.
It took the developers over 18 months to get to this design and functionality, but the hard work was worth it. They even created a batch of 50 Shortcut-S keyboards, but for mass production, they will need a lot of money, and the good news is that you can help them. Mind you, this keyboard works with all sorts of image and video editing software, not just with Photoshop, so it could prove useful even if you prefer other tools of the trade.
Sorin Neica and his team (made of Romanians located in Austria and Canada) are looking for funding on Kickstarter, where they set an initial goal of $185,280. This is the amount needed for starting the mass production of Shortcut-S, but the developers also has two stretch goals. Should the campaign raise more than $350K, the team will also develop a wireless version of the Photoshop keyboard. If it reaches $550K, an aluminum version with a Mac design will also be created.
Backing the project with $89 is sufficient for securing a Shortcut-S keyboard, but pledging $9,000 would get you a keyboard and a trip to Brasov, Transylvania. This must be one of the craziest incentives I’ve ever seen in a Kickstarter campaign, but hopefully it will attract people and funds. I wonder if others will follow this example and start making keyboards for specific apps. There are plenty of such keyboards for games, but no so many for complex pieces of software such as Photoshop.
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