15 Time-Saving Lightroom Tricks You Might Not Know

Lightroom has been around long enough now that most photographers are au fait with it, many even experienced. But with modern software — particularly in our industry — the depth is almost unknowable. So, here are 15 tricks which can save you time, and I'd bet there are very few photographers, if any, that already knew all of these.

I went through clear stages with Lightroom. At first, I thought it was so complex and intricate that I couldn't possibly become confident at it, let alone master it. Then, over the years I began to pick up tricks, I improved my workflow, and I gained experience in using it for multiple applications. I naively began to believe that I was in fact mastering it. Then I reached the stage which has lasted the longest. I know what I know, and I now know how much there is to know, and therefore just how little of that I know. You know?

The tip I heard some time ago that has served me very well is the backslash tip. Pressing and holding the backslash key will show you the image before you made any edits. Releasing the key will go back to showing you the image with the edits you've made. This might seem an innocuous tool, but it has a number of perks: you can see if you've pushed your image too far with post processing, you can spot areas of the image that need attention, you can identify parts of your image that haven't take well to your new settings, and so on.

Do you have any time-saving tips for when using Lightroom?

Robert K Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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3 Comments

re the backslash key... if anyone knows how to to this trick on a Spanish keyboard which has no backslash key, please let me know. It seems like a very helpful tip.
One thing I would love t see happen in lightroom is a greater range of keystrokes that can be reassigned. I would dearly love to be able to reassign as I do in PS making my Spanish keyboard far easier to work with, but alas, I can't equate PS and Lightroom shortcuts. Rather annoying.

nice tips , i have to admit , some of those i didnt know ... nice vid. will be usefull for newborn photo post-processing. thanks a lot

Jamie's videos are always first class in my opinion. He's to the point and down to earth. Not overdosed on "Cool Pills" like many YouTubers out there.