Why is it that every great idea you see these days always turns out to be a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign rather than something immediately available? Probably because the marketplace is not a fan of the new and exciting – too risky. Still, there have been a few crowd-funding-based ideas that have successfully raised enough money to become a reality. Most recently, the iPhone-friendly paper business card and the Wipebook (we’re still waiting for ours to arrive) are great examples, to say nothing of the CMYK playing cards.
Now we have one that may or may not reach its funding goal of $185,280 (it’s at $20,000 now, with 46 days to go). Regardless, it’s probably something that needs to exist: the Photoshop keyboard.
The 12-by-16-inch Shortcut-S device has 319 (!) customizable buttons, the first 299 of which are already programmed to perform common operations in Photoshop. (The last 20 can be programmed by choosing the filter, function or tool desired.) All buttons can be programmed to work with any design program.
Simply plug this keyboard into your Mac or PC’s USB port and you’re good to go, all for a cost of $89.
Granted there are a lot of tiny buttons here, and the different icons may be harder to read for some of us, um, mature folks. Still, considering how many shortcuts key combinations we’ve memorized, it should be a piece of cake to remember where each button is on a keyboard. We say bring it on!
