If you have just come back from a shoot, and are sitting down to begin your editing process, you likely want to do it in the most efficient way possible. Sorting through and editing hundreds of photos is very time consuming, but by using the shortcuts and tips below, you can help cut this time down! These tips will help you refine your workflow and help you work more efficiently when editing photos in Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom Classic Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to cut down time and make your workflow more efficient! Rather than moving your mouse around the screen, you can just hit one key on your keyboard and do the same thing. Helpful keyboard shortcuts in Lightroom include:
- To view the Library module grid of photos or to return to the Library module from other modules, press the G key.
- To adjust the thumbnail sizes in the Library module grid, press – or +.
- To view an image full screen, press the F key.
- To enter the Develop module, press the D key.
- When culling photos, there are quite a few useful keyboard shortcuts:
- Flag photos as “picked” with the P key, or “rejected” with the X key
- Rate your photos with a star rating from 1 to 5 using the 1-5 number keys
- Colour code your photos with the 6-9 number keys. The 6 key labels an image “Red”, 7 labels it “Yellow”, 8 labels it “Green”, and 9 labels it “Blue”.
- If you turn on Caps Lock while culling and labelling photos, Lightroom will automatically advance to the next photo after you have applied a label, saving you from manually clicking forwards.
Auto-sync Edits Across Multiple Photos
There may be basic edits that you want to apply across a group of photos from a shoot. Maybe the lighting needs to be adjusted in all of them, for example. Rather than adjusting the same setting on each photo individually, you can sync these edits across multiple images at one time and edit them in batches.
Step 1: In the Develop module, apply the adjustments you wish to make to the first photo in your group.
Step 2: After making these adjustments, select the rest of the photos in the group of photos you want to edit (hold Command/Ctrl + Click), either in the Library module grid view, or in the Develop film strip.
Step 3: Select “Sync”, which can be found at the bottom of the right hand panel.
Step 4: Select the options that you want to sync between the photos, which will be all of the things you just adjusted on the first photo in the Develop module!
See Also:
How to Make a Photo Black & White Except One Colour
How to Cull Photos in Lightroom
How to Use the Tone Curve in Lightroom
Be More Precise with Lightroom’s Sliders
Have you ever felt like the sliders in Lightroom jump around too quickly or too far, making it hard to make the precise adjustments you want? If you have experienced this, there is a way you can extend the sliders so you can make more precise adjustments.
All you have do is place your cursor between the toolbar in the Develop module and the image you are working on, until your cursor turns to a pair of arrows, with one pointing left and one pointing right. Then, just click and drag and expand the toolbar. This will, in turn, make the sliders bigger, which will allow you to make more precise adjustments while editing your photos.
Editing your photos can be a daunting task, especially if you are coming back from a shoot where you have hundreds of images to sort through, and then edit. Understanding the shortcuts that are available to you within Lightroom will save you tons of time and make your editing process go much more smoothly!