Hidden gems in Lightroom - share your

[thommy]

Hi all

I'm very familiar with Lightroom and it's doing what it's supposed to do. But now and then you find hidden gems or not so often mentioned features that can help you in your workflow.
So why not share your latest found feature that made you shout out loud - WOOOW?
Please share with me and others so we can make full use of Lightroom together.

Thommy Andersen

 

[Paul B]

Excellent thread Thommy. Hard one this; one person's "gem" is another group's "we've done this since like forever'"

A couple of mine:

Sometimes I have a large bunch of photos that I'm not publishing online but I still want to share with someone. Without the faff of exporting, uploading or emailing tens of individual photos I use the 'Export PDF ...' function within Slideshow. If you have a slideshow template set up just for this purpose it's quick and dead easy. One of the key things for me was getting right the trade-off between picture quality (jpeg) and pdf size. An article that helped with this is Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » An Analysis of Lightroom JPEG Export Quality Settings.

Talking of Jeffrey Friedl my other 'gem' is his excellent collection of plug-ins. Okay, as far as this thread goes they're compensating for LR's deficiencies; but as a LR user they fit the bill! Probably reasonable to say there's something for everyone here. I've only recently discovered these but my favourite so far is Metadata Wrangler, which controls what metadata is/isn't included during any export.

 

[Zanthe]

When do folks use the shift + double click on the whites and black?

After making other adjustments?

 

[Zenon]

For those of you with LR7 try the Auto. Here is a comparison with auto and double clicking on each one separately. I know many don't like the contrast it selects but that is just one slider.

First is Auto

 

[Zenon]

When I do a lot of edits and send some files to PS I like to prevent the CR2's from being exported. This includes not being in the the file naming sequence.

1. After saving in PS a new TIFF file is created and placed beside the CR2.

2. I immediately flag the CR2. I also hide it under the TIFF but you don't have to.

3. When done editing

a) Edit - Select Flagged Photos

b) Edit - Invert Selection

Now the flagged CR2's won't be exported. I'm sure there is a better way but I stumbled into this a long time ago and it works for me.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

A quick 'Gem'-
When first culling photos in the grid it makes flagging/rating photos easier to place the four fingers of the left hand over the four keys in screen-clip. The Right hand can control the cursor keys to move through the thumbnails.
The little finger on the tilde key [`] places a Pick Flag, [1,2,3] place a rating star.

 

[stevevp]

My favourite - Shift-double click on the slider label for the Blacks and Whites sliders. It calculates the 'auto' setting based on other existing settings (Exposure, Crop, etc.) so it's usually right.

Daft question, where exactly do you double click? Which panel?

 

[Bob_B]

Develop module, hover over "Whites" or "Blacks", and double click for auto.

 

[stevevp]

Daft question, where exactly do you double click? Which panel?

Develop module, hover over "Whites" or "Blacks", and double click for auto.

Doh, I already do this, I read it as though this was something different for B&W pics. One thing though, I tend to do this before I crop and before I do a final exposure adjustment. Looks like I should be doing it at the end?

 

[Paul McFarlane]

One thing though, I tend to do this before I crop and before I do a final exposure adjustment. Looks like I should be doing it at the end?

Yes (ideally) as the auto calculation is based on the other adjustments (adaptive) - assuming you're talking auto on the Whites & Blacks, not overall

 

[Zenon]

Biggest controversy with Auto is the contrast adjustment that seems to head to around -18. Not sure what that is based on. I see more detail in shadow areas when it is lower but I know many don't like it. Perhaps Adobe will proved overrides to Auto settings some day. Contrast at least as this is the one most often mentioned.

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

I have several favorites like Jonh Beardy's Workflow Smart Collection but one that is build in in Lightroom is the Auto Advanced option. Default it is off but i have it on all te time. What is does is: going to the next picture after you rate it (pick, reject or stars).

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

And one i use a lot is doubleclick on a slider to bring it back to the starting point.

 

[PhilBurton]

I have several favorites like Jonh Beardy's Workflow Smart Collection but one that is build in in Lightroom is the Auto Advanced option. Default it is off but i have it on all te time. What is does is: going to the next picture after you rate it (pick, reject or stars).

For me, John's smart workflow, as adapted for my needs, has been a game changer.

As we are seeing the "gems" are not all Adobe creations. No surprise there.

 

[Ian.B]

The little finger on the tilde key [`] places a Pick Flag,

View attachment 10745 View attachment 10746

Glad you mentioned that one as I have been using it for years. I found it by chance when I hit "~" instead of "1" and although I have passed it on to many educators, I have never seen it mentioned. Beats me because as you said the left hand is in place to flag and reject (x) photos.
Add in the Caps Locks to auto-advance to the next file and things move so much faster
Another idea I'm using now instead of flag is to use "1" as that can be read by other applications --- flag is a Lr thing only like Lr collections.
Instead of using numbers (2 to 5) for grading photos; I use them as a guide to editing done. For me a photo is in, or out (Xed and deleted), and everything else is a maybe but likely never used

Great thread; I must go back through it again

 

[Ian.B]

Meant to add this also
If you find yourself flicking back and forth between a couple or more files trying to decide which is best there is good chance all are OK to use --- pick with a flag or a 1 and move on. No point beating yourself up about "which one" . On the other hand; if you flicking back and forth between a couple or more files because they are not really as good as you hoped for, then is fair to say all or most should be deleted; however it pays to keep one to remind you why the photo failed.

 

[Ian.B]

I haven't seen one; but just noticed this an oldish thread but there lots of new to it members

Cleaning up the dust spots
Open Navigator (LH side panel)> click 1:1> move the white square to the top left hand corner in the Nav panel
open the spot removal tool >remove any spots on the screen
Hit the page down (Pg Dn) key to move down the image
The really neat part is Lr will move the white square up and over to the right when you get to the bottom
Continue moving down/across the image with the PgDn key until you get to the bottom Right hand corner . All done
You can also use the "Visualise spots" tool as that shows the spots better

Dust spots is something I don't need worry about too much now as I seldom change lenses on the Oly (only 2 lenses), and I also use a crossover camera. The joy of modern cameras

 

[MarkNicholas]

Great thread.

After years of applying metadata I recently and accidentally stumbled on this. I don't know if it has always been there or is a recent feature. I have previously applied metadata for the Country, State / Province, City and Location. For the past 10 years I have just typed in the text box. Where a particular entry had been recently inserted it would (sometimes) auto select after typing the first character but otherwise you had to type in full. However, what I recently found is that if you click on the actual metadata title (to the left of the text box) you get a drop down list of recently used entries which appears to (smartly) take account of other metadata and keyword entries. This saves quite a lot of time.

 

[thommy]

Great thread.

After years of applying metadata I recently and accidentally stumbled on this. I don't know if it has always been there or is a recent feature. I have previously applied metadata for the Country, State / Province, City and Location. For the past 10 years I have just typed in the text box. Where a particular entry had been recently inserted it would (sometimes) auto select after typing the first character but otherwise you had to type in full. However, what I recently found is that if you click on the actual metadata title (to the left of the text box) you get a drop down list of recently used entries which appears to (smartly) take account of other metadata and keyword entries. This saves quite a lot of time.

Did you know that if you drag your photos to the correct location in the map module, you will automaticallty get city, state/province, country, ISO country code and altitude applied in the metadata?
I use it all the time and it saves time to manually typing into all the text boxes.

Thommy

 

[prbimages]

When editing the Point Curve:

• Hold down the ALT key while dragging to give finer control over the adjustment.
• Hold down the SHIFT key while dragging to restrict the adjustment to the vertical direction only.

 

[Wood]

I've only been using LR Classic for a few months now, but one thing I discovered by accident (and I don't think I've seen it in books by LRQ, Scott Kelby or even Martin Evening):

We know that you can get finer slider control by extending the borders of the panel, or by hovering and clicking the up/down arrows. However, I also found that if I hover over the slider, THEN hold the <SHIFT> key (you'll see the options change to include 'Reset'), and finally use the mouse to move the slider, LR will scale movement down to the most granular level. So I can for example change my exposure by 100th/s of a stop using the mouse and slider and without having to extend the panel.

 

[davidedric]

With reference to the black or white slider double click. I am a bit puzzled. Why not just enable the Clipping indicators and drag the sliders to taste, by which I mean you decide whether you are losing important details. What am I missing?
Dave

 

[Wood]

With reference to the black or white slider double click. I am a bit puzzled. Why not just enable the Clipping indicators and drag the sliders to taste, by which I mean you decide whether you are losing important details. What am I missing?
Dave

I think it really boils down to speed from my experience. The double click to produce a targeted adjustment 'auto' will be quicker than a manual combination of ALT and Slider. But I tend to agree with you, using ALT will more or less achieve the same thing, but with the addition of backing off (or increasing) as you wish. I normally wind it in a bit as most of the auto settings seem to be aiming for a high contrast, maximum dynamic range - which is a bit out of fashion right now!