Left handed tablet use?

Joltya

Hey everyone!

So I'm a left handed artist, and I'm getting increasingly frustrated with having to deal with keybinds in softwares where I use a tablet; specifically with the Undo/Redo hotkeys in Photoshop and Zbrush. Ideally, I would like to have Undo bound to Ctrl+/ to have my right hand one the keyboard and my left hand holding my pen. The problem with this is Photoshop only allows A-Z to be used as hotkeys, and even if I could I don't always use my tablet with it and would like to use Ctrl+Z sometimes, and Zbrush just doesn't allow it at all for some reason (it allows it for one undo level, but I can only use it once per session).

It's really frustrating and kills my motivation that I have to stop whatever I'm doing just to undo what I did. Imagine having to go to "Edit>Undo" every time you made a mistake. I know I can't be the only one who experiences this, but I never see it talked about at all. Are there any other lefties out there who have found a solution to this?

Zocky

Another lefty here. Yeah sometimes that is annoying, though i do try to setup my shortcuts either way, so its not such a problem. I do have some weirdass shortcuts. For example, in photoshop, i use F9 for undo, and that works great for me; since i paint with my left hand, my fingers are usually resting somewhere about F9 anyway, so i never have to stretch out to undo at any point.
It also works for me at least that way, if i use wacom or mouse, doesn't really matter, i'ts always easier for me to press f9 than ctrl+z.

It is more annoying that i had to rotate my wacom for 180 degrees, and for some reason, wacom decides to reboot all the time after that, causing icon to pop up and stop working for a sec.

thomasp

i'm not only left-handed but use a german keyboard layout, too where the Z and Y are switched around, making undo a pretty challenging to reach combo even for folks wired the right-way - but no, honestly hasn't ever struck me as a problem. you're not one of these people who undo 3 out of every 4 brushstrokes, are you? if so i'm a big fan - seen all your youtube-tutorials.

if you don't have (or want to use) tablet buttons to map undo, perhaps look into one key-remapping software (on windows for example look at keytweak) to move/clone relevant keys into reach? there's also utilities like autohotkey that might be helpful to achieve this and automate things a lot better and can work on an application-based level (so it's only doing its thing as long as photoshop is running in the foreground).

in zbrush, if your undo stops working that can have multiple reasons. is it really working reliably with CTR+Z for you?

pior

I would like to have Undo bound to Ctrl+/ to have my right hand one the keyboard and my left hand holding my pen.

Get into the habit of using your whole keyboard with one hand, then touch-type from the left half of it instead of the right side.

I personally use right thumb on left Alt and middle finger on F as a touch typing starting point. Meaning that to undo in Photoshop I can hit Ctrl-Alt-Z comfortably from there.

lotet

Ive bindet ctrl+z to one of the pen buttons, its literary the best ever.

Joltya

thomasp said:

If you don't have (or want to use) tablet buttons to map undo, perhaps look into one key-remapping software (on windows for example look at keytweak) to move/clone relevant keys into reach? there's also utilities like autohotkey that might be helpful to achieve this and automate things a lot better and can work on an application-based level (so it's only doing its thing as long as photoshop is running in the foreground).

in zbrush, if your undo stops working that can have multiple reasons. is it really working reliably with CTR+Z for you?

I started using Autohotkey the past while and it's working pretty great! Can't really find too much downsides besides having to start it up everytime I reboot my computer, but hey.

In regards to your second question; no, I never had any problems with using Ctrl+Z in Zbrush. My theory is that the issue was if I tried to bind a key to "undo", it would only bind to undo at the current history level, since when you try to rebind it that's the only option it appears to give.

lotet said:

Ive bindet ctrl+z to one of the pen buttons, its literary the best ever.

I've tried that in the past, but it's too important to me to have access MMB as well as right click when using a pen.

thomasp

Joltya said:

I started using Autohotkey the past while and it's working pretty great! Can't really find too much downsides besides having to start it up everytime I reboot my computer, but hey.

In regards to your second question; no, I never had any problems with using Ctrl+Z in Zbrush. My theory is that the issue was if I tried to bind a key to "undo", it would only bind to undo at the current history level, since when you try to rebind it that's the only option it appears to give.

re: autohotkey: it might depend on the windows version you're using but at least here in win7 i have an autostart folder. dump any shortcut to an executable in there and it gets launched when you log on. i'd be surprised to hear they don't have that or equivalent functionality in 8 or 10 anymore.

re: undo in zbrush
there seems to be a disconnect in Z between global undo and tool undo that manages to break tool undo with custom keys assigned. i had that problem a long time ago. what i have been doing since the dawn of time to solve it is to put these lines:

//ZBrush Hotkeys
[EDIT:UNDO,634] // Ctrl+Z
[EDIT:TOOL:UNDO,634] // Ctrl+Z

into my ZStartup/HotKeys/StartupHotKeys.txt file. in my case these do map to CTRL+Z, however you'll want the magic number for your key combination: try mapping your favourite combo, store the hotkeys file and open it in a text editor, compare your numbers for the undo mapping and merge it with my lines into your startup-hotkeys file, see where that gets you.

monster

As a lefty, I've ditched the keyboard entirely. I map one pen button to Undo, and the other to the Radial Menu. The radial menu is nice because it stays up until you stop hovering over it. This allows you to Undo several times. I zoom, pan, and rotate with my right hand touch screen style.

I've got a Surface Pro and a Intous Touch so I use this same setup in both places.

Joltya

^ That's pretty awesome. I imaging it must feel pretty liberating to be able to do everything without having to rely on a keyboard. Are there any easy-to-access features or tools that you miss?