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:
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/rule-of-thirds/
http://www.silverlight.co.uk/tutorials/compose_expose/thirds.html
http://www.allensphotoblog.com/blog1/images/WolfRuleThirds.jpg
http://www.asme.org/Jobs/Entrepreneurs/Blogging_Way_Business_Success.cfm
http://www.digicamhelp.com/learn/shoot-pro/rule.php
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http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/library/lib/exe/fetch.php/image_composition:road_leadingline.jpg
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UPDATE: This tutorial was written a few years ago and I was using Lightroom 2, which is
completely outdated. You can check out some newer tutorials on How I Edit my images with
Lightroom 4 and 5 too. The below information still works with newer versions of Lightroom
though. Happy reading!
I have been asked many times about my post-processing workflow, how I fix and improve my
photos and what software I use.
Well, I finally decided to share my technique and write a tutorial on how to process photos
with Lightroom.
I use many softwares. However, the one I spend most time on is definitely Adobe Lightroom
(LR) which I consider to be the perfect tool for photographers. I use Lightroom 2 because of
my laptops age (its old) but you can do all the following with Lightroom 3 (and probably
more).
Lightroom is the modern era darkroom. It is less complicated than Photoshop and just got
improved tremendously with the addition of layers, which was the only thing lacking.
Lightroom works on photos in a non-destructive way, which means it doesnt destroy pixels
and doesnt alter the quality of the photo.
Alright, lets get to the serious stuff. I would first like to point out that in order to get the best
results, it is crucial to shoot in RAW format. There is much more information contained in a
RAW files than a jpeg and all that information will be used to correct and improve your shots.
So lets start with the guinea-pig-photo:

I took this shot in Chiang Mai, during a field trip in a market. It was a bright overcast day. I
wanted to get this photo of a Thai lady selling street food. As you can see, I was shooting in
difficult lighting conditions. She was lost in the shadow while the background and foreground
were too bright because of the sky. This resulted in a failed photo.
But thankfully, I knew I could fix this the way I wanted later in LR.
Of course, Its important to clarify that I dont advocate the idea of just randomly getting
shots and thinking I can fix this later. I try to get the best shot possible on the spot but I
always think post-processing is absolutely necessary to bring out the best in a photo (read my
article about why I dont believe in Photo Purists).
So, after a long day of shooting, I go back home, upload my photos, import them in LR, go
through all the keywording and cataloging (this workflow will be for another time) and Im
ready to fix this photo.
First I analyze it for a while. Whats the main problem? Is the composition good? Is the
lighting good? Does it tell a story? Are there any distracting elements? Once you figure out
what needs to be fixed its much easier.

Looking at my photo, I realize that the main problem is the lighting. Half of the photo is dark
and the main subject is lost in the shadow. The background is also distracting and attracts the
eye away from the lady.
The composition is fine, I like it the way it is. It just needs a slight cropping to remove some
unwanted elements.

I use the Crop Tool to improve my composition (key shortcut is R). Its important to set
the ratio before cropping in case you intend to print your photos one day (if you dont want to
end with parts of your print chopped off). Usually 23 is good for most photos. I then adjust
the crop frame on the photo to remove some of the unessential elements on the left side. You
can see that the main subject (lady) is correctly positioned according to the rule of thirds
(intersection of the thin lines). If you dont know about the rule of thirds, Google it! Its a
very important rule to understand if you want eye-pleasing compositions.
Now that I have my composition set, I need to fix the biggest problem: the shadow.
To fix this, I use a very handy tool on Lightroom: the Graduated Filter (you can click M to
access it). This is basically a virtual GND filter that can also be used to brighten up sections
of photos.

When I click on the filter, a menu opens up with some settings. As I need to brighten the
upper part of the photo, I increase the exposure and add some brightness. Then I click on the
image in the area where the shadow meets the bright part (see position). As you can see, it
increases the exposure on the shadowy part while leaving the bottom part untouched. The
space between the 2 lines is the feather zone, I play around with it a bit to make the lighting
appear uniform.
You can see here the before and after the Graduated Filter. The shadowy part is all gone.
The main problem is fixed!

Now, all I need is to play around and adjust the photo to my liking. I usually follow the
settings from top to bottom, makes it easier.

1. This is a personal taste but I usually like my photos to be on the warm side. So I slightly
increase the temperature to my liking.
2. I increase the exposure a little bit to make it brighter. I also max out the recovery slider.
The recovery slider helps recover details in the blown out white parts of the photo. In this
case, it brings out some more colors and details in the background. I add some fill light which
brightens only the dark parts of the photo without touching the light parts and finally I
increase the contrast.
3. I add some clarity which helps sharpen the photo and bring more details on the food in the
foreground.
After all the little adjustments, I use the tone curve to add more contrast and punch.

On the tone curves menu, I use the sliders to decrease the highlights (all those bright parts in
the background are not necessary). I increase the light parts to brighten up the photo a little
while I decrease the dark and shadow parts to add contrast. This also brings up the colors a
tad more.
The next step (not pictured, you can figure it out easily), I go to the HSL (Hue, Saturation,
Luminance) menu and increase the red/orange/yellow luminance slightly (between 10-20) to
make the warm colors on the background pop up against the dark zones.
Next, it is important to make sure the main subject of a photo is clearly visible and
no distraction will attract the viewers eye to other parts. To achieve this, it is required to
know how to paint your photos with light and shadows (hey, this website is called Canvas
of Light after all, right?).
First, the easiest and fastest way to do so is to add some vignetting. This will darken the
borders of the image to help viewers focus on the center of the photo. There is nothing
important on the edges so they can all fall into darkness.

By comparing with the above photo, you might not immediately notice the difference, but the
eye is naturally focusing on the center part of the photo where the lady and food are. I just
adjusted the post-crop vignetting to darken the edges.
Now to the painting part. To paint over parts of the photo that are distracting, I use the
Adjustment Tool Brush.

Once its clicked, a menu appears similar to the menu on the Graduated Filter. I can adjust
many settings with the sliders and paint over my photo.
Here, I decrease the exposure, brightness and saturation and use a small to medium sized
brush with a high flow and feather and paint over the unwanted areas. I focus on the bright
background, the green cover on the right side, the colorful sheets in the middle and the edge
on the left side.
All these areas are distracting and attract the eyes away from the subject. They do not
contribute anything to the photo so I just paint them into darkness/oblivion. (Tip: When you
hover your mouse on the little pin, it shows you the painted areas in red).
Finally, the last step, after painting distracting elements out, I focus on the lady with the same
tool brush.

I click on New (dont forget or youll end up painting in black again). I adjust the exposure,
add some brightness and contrast and paint over the skin of the lady. The face is actually the
most important part as the human eye is naturally attracted to eyes and faces in a photo. This
makes her pop out against the dark background.
And thats it!
I usually spend a little more time fine-tuning details, painting over shadows and brightening
up small parts. I would also slightly desaturate and darken the blue bucket next to her (the
lady and the food are the main subjects, not the bucket). But for the sake of this tutorial, Ill
just keep it simple.
After all is done, click on File>Export and youll have a beautiful and shiny new photo to
show to your friends.
Heres a Before/After photo to see the difference, you will easily notice the improvement
(play with the slider, it might not show the After image sometimes, just reload the page).

Show only beforeShow only after

~~oOo~~
I hope this tutorial helped you understand a few techniques in Lightroom and how to fix
photos shot in difficult lighting conditions. If you are looking for more tutorials, just visit my
Tutorial page for more.
Please do not hesitate to ask any questions or for clarifications and Ill gladly answer.
Happy Shooting!

Ashley Spaulding, one of our CM Admins, is one of the sweetest people you could ever hope
to meet. Shes also super helpful, talented and resourceful. She saw that many of our
members were wanting a tutorial on how to use the adjustment brush in Adobes Lightroom
and jumped right on it with this fabulous tutorial. Ashley is also one of our teaching
assistants in the Lightroom 101 workshop at CMU check it out!! Thanks for the fantastic
tutorial, Ashley!

Tutorial | Lightroom Adjustment Brush

A lot of members have mentioned that youd like to know how to use the Adjustment Brush
tool in Lightroom, so I thought Id put together a tutorial using skin smoothing and an eye
pop as examples. Ive used Lightroom 3 for this tutorial, but the same process can be used
with the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 2. And keep in mind that there are many
applications for this tool; Im only using skin smoothing and an eye pop as examples of how
to actually use the Adjustment Brush.
Okay, so lets get started!
Im going to be working with the following photo during this tutorial; this is the SOOC
version:

The Adjustment Brush is an awesome tool that you can use to make local edits to photo
qualities including exposure, brightness, saturation, contrast, and others. Prior to using the
Adjustment Brush to make such local changes, I generally make the global changes Im
going to make to my photo. So, in this photo, Ive already made the following adjustments:

fixed exposure
corrected white balance

used Spot Removal tool to get rid of stray hair and to get rid of large black
area in bokeh

increased brightness, contrast, clarity, vibrance, and saturation

cropped

Now Im ready to do some editing with the Adjustment Brush!

The two things I want to do with the Adjustment Brush here are: 1) even out my daughters
skin a little bit, and 2) brighten her eyes just a touch.
To open the Adjustment Brush tool, you can either press the letter k or select it from the tool
panel below your histogram. You can actually press k from anywhere in Lightroom, and it
will pull up the Adjustment Brush in the Develop module, even if youre in a different
module at the time. You can also press k again to close the Adjustment Brush.

One of the first things I do whenever I open the Adjustment Brush is make sure that the Auto
Mask option is checked. Auto masking attempts to sense the edges of whatever it is in your
photo that youre painting in order to help you paint only inside your intended area.

When you first open the Adjustment Brush, youll see a drop-down menu to the right of the
word Effect with a variety of qualities you can alter on your image. You can select one of
those options or you can start adjusting the various sliders on your own; if you adjust more
than one slider, the Effect option will change to Custom.

Lets start with smoothing out the skin in this photo. To even out skin, I can simply adjust the
Clarity slider or I can select either Clarity or Soften Skin from the drop-down Effects menu.
With a little bit of tweaking, they all get me the result Im after. Note, though, that if I select
the Soften Skin option, the Clarity slider defaults to -100. I generally smooth skin in
Lightroom by selecting the Soften Skin option; so, I select that option, and Im ready to start
painting.
When youre using the Adjustment Brush, you can move the sliders any way you want prior
to painting, and then you can adjust them to your liking once youve finished painting your
intended area, as long as your brush for that particular area is active.
When I move my cursor onto my image, my brush appears. I can adjust the size of my brush
with the [ and ] keys; [ makes your brush smaller, and ] makes your brush bigger. You can
also go down to the Brush panel and change the size of your brush with the slider.
I dont want to use a huge brush when Im painting over skin because I feel like it increases
my chances of painting outside my intended area. And even though I have Auto Mask
checked, its not foolproof; Lightroom doesnt intuitively know what youre attempting to
paint if youre using a brush so big that its making you paint all over your subjects hair,
clothes, and such. So, I opt for a relatively small brush. The + sign inside my brush indicates
that Im painting on an effect; a sign is used when youre erasing one.
I start painting by holding my left-click down and moving my brush around in a small,
circular motion until the area I want to paint is covered. Depending on the quality youre
changing in your photo, youll start to see your image change as you paint. Once I feel like
Im done painting, I press the letter o to make sure Ive covered everything I need to cover.
This brings up a color overlay that shows where Ive painted.

The overlay is a huge help in seeing where you need to paint more and where you may need
to erase. My painting looks pretty good to me for the most part. The Auto Mask option has
helped keep most of my brush strokes on her skin and not on her eyes, hair, and clothes. The
one area that did get painted over that shouldnt have is her lips, so Im going to erase that.
Im going to keep my overlay on while Im erasing so that I can see exactly where Ive
erased. To erase brush strokes, go down to the Brush panel, and click Erase. You adjust the
size of your eraser the same ways you adjust the size of your brush. I see the sign in my
brush, so I know Im ready to start erasing around her lips. I choose a much smaller brush
since its a very small area I need to erase, and I start moving my eraser around the same way
I moved my brush around. With the overlay still on, I can see that my painting and erasing are
just the way I want them now.

Now I press the o key again to remove the overlay so that I can see the effect as I adjust the
slider. I prefer skin to look fairly natural and not too smooth in my photos, so I never leave
my clarity at -100 when I smooth skin. I play around with the slider each time I smooth skin,
but I generally end up around -55. For this particular photo, however, I played around with
the slider and decided I was happy with the clarity around -80.

One thing that really helps me decide whether Im happy with the brush adjustments Ive
made is this small, rectangular button Ive circled below:

That little button allows you to turn your adjustments on and off so that you can see the
effect(s) they have on your photo. I rely on it a lot to help me see whether Ive taken an
adjustment too far or whether I can push it a little further.
Now, lets say you want to continue to use the Adjustment Brush but youre done with one
type of adjustment. No problem! With the Adjustment Brush still open, you simply click on
New right underneath the brush icon, and go through the same process with your new effect.
In my example, I want to brighten her eyes just a little bit, so I select New and then choose
Brightness for my effect. I almost always zoom into 100% whenever Im making an
adjustment on eyes in a photo so that I can paint easier since theyre a smaller area.
Before I start painting, I press the o key again to get my overlay so that I can see exactly
where Ive painted. Once Im happy with my painting, I remove the overlay so that I can see
how the effect changes the eyes in my image. At this point, I zoom back out to normal size so
that I can see how the changes to the eyes affect the look of my image as a whole.
Even though I chose Brightness as my initial effect, I tend to move several sliders when Im
working with eyes. For this example, Ive bumped exposure and brightness a bit, and Ive
increased the saturation, clarity, and sharpness as well. Once again, I rely quite a bit on the
button that turns my adjustments on and off to see how they affect my photo and to make sure
I maintain the type of editing I want to achieve. After making those changes, heres where
Im at:

The changes I made with the Adjustment Brush were not major, which is good because my
intention was to effect minor changes and enhance my image in subtle ways.
Some additional Adjustment Brush tips:

Anytime you want to return to the default setting for something, you can
double-click on the slider label, and it will reset. For example, if I increase
the size of my brush too much and want to return to the default, I simply
double-click on the word Size in the Brush panel, and it resets to its
default value.
If you press Shift while holding the o key, you can go through various
overlay colors.

You can see where your brushes are by pressing the h key. Small circles
pins will appear where you have initiated brushes. Your active pin is
denoted by a black center. If you want to make adjustments to a particular
brush, you first need to make it the active one by selecting it. Your pins
will automatically go away as youre painting so that you have a clearer
picture of where youre making brush strokes. You can hide your pins by
pressing the h key again.

Pressing the Reset button at the bottom of the Adjustment Brush panel will
clear out all of your brushes.

If you only want to clear a certain brush, make all of your brushes visible
by pressing the h key, and select the brush you want to clear. Once the
brush is selected/active, simply press delete, and only that selected/active
brush is cleared.

Heres a final comparison of my SOOC and my edited version:

10 Quick and Easy Lightroom Tricks Every User

Should Know
By Joshua Johnson,16 May 2011

46

Phototuts+ author Ivaylo Gerchev recently published a series of in-depth tutorials aimed at
taking you from beginner to pro in Lightroom in only one week. Today we're following that
up with a few quick and easy Lightroom tricks that you can quickly add to your workflow
whether you're just picking up the app or have been using it for years.

Learn more about Adobe Creative Cloud and Lightroom.

The tips and tricks below will help you accomplish everything from navigating around the
app better to smoothing out skin wrinkles.

More than One Way

If you've been using Photoshop for a few years, then you know very well that there are two or
more ways to go about nearly every task. The app is so incredibly huge and powerful that
your workflow has a wide range of flexibility. The result is that no two Photoshoppers work
quite the same way.
Lightroom is exactly the same and features many seemingly redundant tools and processes
for improving your photos. As we go through the tips below, you'll occasionally see a couple
alternative options, and you probably even have more suggestions for each process. Knowing
your way around Lightroom gives you the flexibility to try multiple ideas to see which works
the best in a given situation.

#1: Use Luminance to Create an Intense Sky

On bright, sunny days, you'd think it would be easy to shoot beautiful blue skies.
Unfortunately, if you're exposing for subjects that are in the shade or with their backs to the
sun, you often get blown out or lackluster sky detail due to the fact that your camera is
attempting to grab information from the shadows.
In Lightroom, you may first reach for the saturation slider for enhancing your sky, but this
isn't always the best option. For starters, saturation is going to intensify the colors globally,
which may not be desirable if all you're really concerned about is the sky. Further, saturation
is a touchy setting and can easily begin to mess with skin tones and other important areas that
you don't want to mess up.

By dropping down to the Hue, Saturation and Luminance panel, you can easily target specific
colors, which gives you much more control than a global shift. However, here again,
saturation might not be the best way to go as the results can become almost cartoony with
even a small adjustment.

A good alternative is to use the blue luminance slider. This does exactly what it sounds like it
would and pulls some of the luminosity out of the blues in the image. The result is a darker,
bolder sky that you can really tweak on an incremental level without messing up non-blue
portions of the image.

#2: Stack Adjustment Brush Effects

The adjustment brush in Lightroom is an awesome tool that allows you to make changes to
very selective parts of an image. One of the most powerful aspects of this feature that you
won't find in Photoshop brushes is that the changes you make are nondestructive and always
editable, even if there are several brushes applied.
This makes stacking effects an incredibly useful trick. Not only can you combine multiple
different adjustment brushes, you can repeat the same one to intensify the effect. For instance,
in lieu of a proper blur feature in Lightroom, it's often the case that users will create an
adjustment brush with the Sharpness set to -100. However, this achieves and extremely subtle
blur and must be applied several times before the effect becomes strongly apparent.
The basic process is that you grab the adjustment brush, tweak your settings, paint in the
effect, then hit "New" to create a new instance of the effect. Repeat this step as necessary
until the effect is as strong as you want it. Use this same method to apply different effects to
different areas of the photo.

As mentioned above, after applying several instances of the brush, you can go back and edit
each of them individually. Each instance of the effect is represented by a dot, simply click on
one to see and adjust its settings or hover over one to see a quick preview of where you
painted that effect in.

#3: Quick Skin Fixes

There are so many things that can go wrong with skin for a photo shoot. I live in the sunny
desert of Phoenix so outside photos tend to really make people look overly red and patchy.
Further, the dry climate tends to wreak havoc on our actual skin so there are always plenty of
rough patches to clean up.
The image above uses a combination of my favorite techniques for improving skin quality in
Lightroom. Let's briefly go over each so you can combine them how you see fit. Remember
to use them conservatively, several small changes amount to one big change.
The first thing to try is simply adjusting the brightness. If the symptom is dark, red skin, you
want to brighten it up a little, which should bring the color back towards something natural.
Also, as a side effect, some of the detail begins to drop off, which is actually a good thing
when you're dealing with wrinkles and pores that are overly apparent.

Next, we once again turn to our friend the Luminance slider. Here you'll want to increase the
luminance for both red and orange. This has the effect of brightening the skin up immensely
in a natural way that's not too harsh. Specifically, it targets those dark red patches and helps
reduce their visibility.
One great method of doing this is to click the little circle in the top left of the luminance
palette. This will allow you to then click and drag directly on the problematic portions of the
skin while Lightroom automatically targets the luminance values for those areas.

Lightroom has a built-in tool that works quite well for this purpose: the "Soften Skin"
adjustment brush (the Spot Removal tool is an obvious but vital tool as well). Dragging the
Soften Skin brush over something will reduce the clarity, which means it's a great way to
reduce the appearance of wrinkles and other skin imperfections.

As you can see in the image below, the default setting for this brush actually increases
sharpness. This is fine for some uses but I often find that I get better results by cranking both
the clarity and sharpness down. Remember that you can always adjust the preset brushes and
aren't stuck with the settings Lightroom gives you!

My final trick for smoothing out skin is really quirky and should be cautiously approached.
Scroll down to the "Noise Reduction" section to see various sliders aimed at reducing the
color noise that is a common side effect of shooting at a high ISO.
To reduce the appearance of noise, Lightroom attempts to blur pixels together slightly. I've
noticed that, as a side effect, this can be a quick way to slightly smooth out all the skin in an
image. There are two reasons why you should think twice before doing this. The first is that
it's a global change, so you're reducing the overall detail in your image. Secondly, the effect
can create super ugly photos if applied in anything but very small amounts
However, there are cases where a slight loss of detail is acceptable, especially if it means
smoother skin and less noise. Again, just be sure to take a close look at your before and after
snapshot to make sure that you did in fact improve the image rather than destroy it!

#4: Switching Crop Overlays

Cropping images inside of Lightroom seems pretty straightforward, but there is some hidden
functionality here that's shouldn't be missed. One of the most important of these is that you
can switch between multiple crop overlays.
The default overlay is shown below. This overlay is definitely one of the most useful as it
makes it easy to apply the rule of thirds to an image.

As it turns out though, this is merely one of six different crop overlay options that you have
inside of Lightroom. To switch to the next option, simply tap the "o" key. You can also flip
the orientation of any overlay by hitting shift-o.

To see all of the options, click on the "Tools" item in the menu bar. Then come down to the
"Crop Guide Overlay" flyout menu to see the options shown below.

#5: Syncing Capture Times From Multiple Shooters

One of the easiest things to forget to do when you have multiple shooters is to sync the clocks
on your respective cameras. This wreaks havoc when it comes time to import. It can be
extremely frustrating to attempt to sort through photos if they're bouncing back and forth
between two different points in the day.
Fortunately, Lightroom offers a solution. It's a little tedious, but once you get the workflow
down you'll be able to do it in a minute or two. The trick is two find two photos, one from
each shooter, taken as closely together as you can find. The easy way to look for these is to
scroll until you see the same event, anything from a laugh to a toast, from two different
angles.
Once you find the two photos, select only one of them and scroll down to the Metadata panel
under the Library module. You should see the capture time and date for the selected photo.
Write this down exactly as you see it.

Next, filter your library results so that you're only seeing images from the other shooter.
Filters can easily be applied via the menu right above the library. Using a Metadata filter, you
can easily select a specific lens or camera, which should be a good way to grab images from a
specific shooter.

When your results are filtered, find the photo that you previously identified as taken at the
same time as the image whose time you wrote down. Select only this image to target it
specifically, then hit Command-A to select all of the images. Lightroom has a really nice
double selection feature that comes in handy for tasks such as this.
Finally, click the button next to the capture time info that we saw before to bring up the
dialog box below. From here, set the time to what you wrote down for the other image.
Lightroom will apply the change to the targeted image and is also smart enough to shift every
other selected photo by the same amount of time. This should match up the capture times for
all of your photos between the multiple shooters throughout the day.

#6: Split Toning: Retro Sweet Spot

Split toning is a fun way to achieve dramatically different effects for your photographs, but
the controls can be a bit confusing if you're not familiar with them.
Given current trends in photography and design, I find a lot of people wanting to bust out a
retro effect similar to what you'd see on Instagram or some other popular and trendy photo
editor.
In recent years I've created and downloaded a ton of retro presets for Lightroom, and almost
all of them are very similar in their split toning structure. Note the position of the both the
highlight and shadow Hue sliders in the image below. The Highlights Hue is set to the first
hash mark and the Shadows Hue is set to the first hash mark past the halfway point. Anything
within one deviation of these locations is a sort of sweet spot that almost always yields
interesting results.

Note that you also must manipulate the saturation and balance sliders, but their position will
depend on what your image is like. I encourage you to have fun experimenting with these.
Try different positions with these sliders to get a feel for the results, which will vary
dramatically even within the Hue parameters that we've established.

Remember that this is only a quick trick to keep in mind and not in any way a hard and fast
rule. Split toning, even with a retro goal in mind, can be achieved through any number of
different techniques. The slider values above simply seem to be reliable in producing a sort of
1970s aged look.

#7: Fading a Lightroom Preset

We're all huge fans of Lightroom presets. With a single click you can take your image from
boring to amazing, who could resist? However, the inevitable problem that you run into with
built-in presets and those that found online is that they're simply too strong. For the most part,
you like the effect, but just wish there was a way to dampen it.
Using only the default Lightroom functions, there are a number of ways to do this, all of
which are a pain. The first and most obvious is to go through and attempt to spot all the
changes and lessen them one slider at a time. Another popular option is to import an edited
and a non-edited version into Photoshop, stack them together and reduce the opacity of the
edited version until you like the result.
Both of these methods take too long and would be completely unnecessary if Adobe would
just include a "Fade" command like the one found in Photoshop. Fortunately for us, there are
some third party developers out there just as frustrated with this problem as we are!
Jarno Heikkinen, recently released an amazing free plugin on his site Knobroom.com. This
plugin, simply titled "The Fader", gives Lightroom the ability to fade presets!
After you download and install the plugin, grab a photo and navigate to the File>Plug-In
Extras menu and click on The Fader. This will bring up the dialog below where you can
select a preset and then reduce its opacity.

#8: Lights Out

This is one that I've known of for a while but frequently forget exists. Any time you want to
draw focus to a specific area, you can use the Lights Out command to dim everything but the
selected photos.
To try this out, go into Grid View, select a few images, then hit the "L" key. The lights will
fade and the result will be something like the image below.

Notice in the screenshot above that the interface is merely dimmed and not completely black.
Hit "L" again and this time everything goes completely dark.

This trick even works in the develop module. Interestingly enough, the dimmed interface
doesn't interfere with functionality so you can still continue to make changes while
maintaining a strong focus on the image.

#9: Solo Mode

We touched on this briefly in our recent Lightroom in-depth series but it's such a great feature
that it's worth taking a closer look at.
As you know, even though the Lightroom interface is incredibly efficient, there are tons of
settings, especially under the develop module. With all of the panels expanded, it can be
difficult to find what you're looking for. Even if you're experienced enough to know where
everything is, you still lose lots of valuable time scrolling back and forth. Also, opening and
closing a panel manually every time you want to use it quickly becomes tedious and
annoying.
Fortunately, Solo Mode saves the day and makes Lightroom much more usable by autocollapsing any panel that you have open as soon as you begin interacting with another panel.
This makes navigating around the interface a breeze. If you're skeptical, just try it out once
and you'll likely never go back.
To activate Solo Mode, right-click on either set of panels (it works on both the left and right
side) and select the option shown below. With that one change your productivity can
skyrocket!

To turn Solo Mode on and off even quicker, option click on any panel.

#10: Helpful Keyboard Shortcuts

To finish out this set of tips, I'll list some helpful keyboard shortcuts that help perform all
kinds of actions. Like Photoshop, Lightroom has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts, some of
which are listed in the menu, many of which aren't. Let's take a look at some of the rarer
shortcuts that can really save you a lot of time and extra clicks.

Caps Lock Auto Advance: From Loupe view, enable Caps Lock and rate
a photo (you can use the numeral keys to help assign ratings quickly.). As
soon as you do, Lightroom will advance to the next image. This trick also
works with flags and color labels.
Library Views: Hit G to go to Grid View, E to go to Loupe View, C to
Compare, N to survey and D to develop or edit the photo.

Toggle Panels: Use F5-F9 to quickly turn on and off the four different tool
panels orbiting the central area.

Alternate Options: While in library view, hold down Option (Alt on a PC)
and you'll see a few changes. Import and Export become Import Catalog
and Export Catalog and Quick Develop toggles the Clarity and Vibrance
settings to Sharpening and Saturation. Also, holding Option on startup will
allow you to choose a catalog.

Reset Sliders: Holding down Option (Alt) in the develop module turns
control titles into reset buttons. You can also double click a slider to return
it to its original position.

Straighten Tool: When using the Crop Tool, hold down Command (Control
on a PC) to bring up the straighten tool. From here, just drag a line across
anything in the photo that should be a straight line.

Quick Slideshow: From grid view, select the photo that you want to start
from and hit Command+Enter (Control+Enter) to start a slideshow.

Moving Sliders: Use the arrow keys to move sliders forward and
backward. Hold down Option (Alt) for smaller increments and Shift for
larger increments.

Show Shortcuts: Press Command+/ (Control+/) in any module to bring

up a quick preview of the shortcuts for that module.