Lightroom Shortcuts You Can't Live Without (And How to Master Them All)
Speed up your workflow by learning these essential Lightroom keyboard shortcuts. And we've created a FREE downloadable pdf that covers EVERY single Lightroom shortcut you could ever need and a ‘Top Lightroom Shortcuts’ poster you can print out and refer to as and when you need!
Learn All of the Lightroom Shortcuts
Ready to unlock the full potential of Lightroom? Download our FREE e-book, "The Ultimate Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut Guide," and become a keyboard ninja! Just fill in the form below to get it straight into your inbox!
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We’ve laid out all of the shortcuts so they’re easily digestible and printable for your desk!
Print the last page of the pdf and use it as a poster.
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Top Lightroom Shortcuts:
Printable poster included in our FREE eBook - The Ultimate Guide to Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts.
Lightroom is the go-to editing application for many photographers wanting to organise, adjust and export their photographs, but the speed of processing lies not just in its tools, but in how quickly you can access them.
More of a Photoshop editor? Check out our Photoshop course.
Let’s face it, us photographers love a shortcut, but not everybody knows all the different ways that your editing time can be reduced with Lightroom keyboard shortcuts. Lightroom doesn’t have to be tedious – in fact it’s designed specifically not to be.
Here’s a peek at the printable poster we’ve included in our ultimate guide (which you can download above!) that includes all of the Lightroom keyboard shortcuts included in this blog.
Want to dive in-depth into Lightroom? Check out our full course here.
Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts
G – Grid View; an overview of all of the images in your collection.
E – Loupe View; preview of the current image selected on the filmstrip.
N – Survey View; view of multiple images selected.
C – Compare View; comparison view of two images “selected” and “candidate”.
Grid view in Lightroom
Loupe View in Lightroom
Survey view in Lightroom
Compare view in Lightroom
Selection Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL/CMD +A – Select All
CTRL/ CMD + D – Deselect All
CTRL/CMD +Click – Select/deselect individual photos
Rate and Flag Keyboard Shortcuts
One of the best features of Lightroom is the ability to organise your images as part of your workflow. As part of this, Lightroom offers a couple of different ways to categorise your work: Flagging, Rating and Colour Coding. When you use the shortcuts for these features, it can cut down the time you spend selecting your images down a huge amount.
P – Quickly Pick/Flag images that you want to review.
U - Unflag any images instantly.
1-5 – Rate your images 1-5 stars simply by using the number keys on your keyboard. It’s a great way to segment your favourites and decide which ones to include or not.
6 – Reject/Red highlights the image with a red box, showing you that it’s been rejected. Press 6 again to undo.
7 - Yellow coding is part of the colour coding system, to undo just press 7 again.
8 - Use green to select your best images for editing. Press 8 to undo.
9 – To highlight in blue. Press 9 to undo.
Use the numbers 1-5 as a shortcut to rate the images in your Lightroom Catalogue with a star rating.
Use the numbers 6 to 9 as a keyboard shortcut to organising your Lightroom catalogue with colour coding.
Develop Keyboard Shortcuts
D – Enter develop module (when in another module), use this Lightroom shortcut to switch to develop mode quickly.
Y – Before/After Preview. This is a bit like the compare view in the library module; you’ll be able to see a before and after of the current image that you’re editing side by side for comparison.
F11 – Toggle Full Screen Mode
\ - Shows original RAW file with no adjustments. Like the Before/After preview, this will show you the unedited version of your image, but it will be the full workspace. It’s great to show a quick check of the changes made.
J – Show Clipping. This keyboard shortcut is really helpful when you are adjusting your highlights and shadows and you want to see where clipping starts to occur.
ALT/OPTION + Drag – Holding down your alt or option key as you adjust the sharpness slider in the Detail panel will make the sharpening mask visible. The black will not have the sharpening applied and the white will.
CRTL/CMD + Z – Undo
CRTL/CMD + Shift + Z – Redo
J will show the highlights/shadows clipping in your image.
Press Y to compare before and after.
To enter the Develop module on Lightroom quickly, press D
ALT/ Option + Drag will show you the sharpening mask in Lightroom while in the detail panel
Conclusion
Ready to unlock the full potential of Lightroom? Download our FREE e-book "The Ultimate Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut Guide," at the top of this page, and become a keyboard ninja! Just fill in the form below to get it straight into your inbox! We’ve split the shortcuts into easy-to-digest chapters for each module of the program for you to keep referring to – all 150 shortcuts!
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