I recommend that you choose a couple of shortcuts to start with and get used to using them. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, slowly start to introduce more as time goes by. Before you know it you’ll be flying through your Lightroom edits like a Pro!

You can view the entire list of shortcuts at the bottom of this article.

Enter the Library Module

Firstly, to enter the library module from anywhere in Lightroom there are two easy shortcuts to remember:

Pressing the ‘G’ key at any time will take you straight into the Grid view in the Library.

If you want to go straight into Loupe View within in the Library (single photo) then just hit the ‘E’ key.

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Enter Grid View	G	G
Enter Loupe View	E	E

Navigating Between Photos

To navigate between your photos you can use the arrow keys. Pressing left and right will move to the next and previous photos. If you’re in the grid view you can also use the up and down arrows to jump between rows.

If you want to zoom in to a 1:1 view to check the photo for sharpness or noise you can just hit the ‘Z’ key. Press ‘Z’ again to zoom back out.

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
View Previous / Next Photo	Arrow Keys	Arrow Keys
Zoom to 100%	Z	Z

Interface

Sometimes it is desirable to show/hide parts of the Lightroom interface to remove distractions and maximise your viewing area. There are several important shortcuts for this:

Hide Panels & Filmstrip

To get a larger area to view your photos you can hit the ’Tab’ key to quickly hide the side panels. Press it again to bring them back.

To show/hide the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen just hit the ‘F6’ key.

To dim everything in the interface except your photo you can hit the ‘L’ key to go into Lights Out mode. Press it once to dim the screen, twice to black out the screen and a third time to return to normal.

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Quickly make more room to view your photos with the ‘Tab’ and/or ‘F6’ keys

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Show / Hide Side Panels	Tab	Tab
Show / Hide Filmstrip	F6	F6
Dim The Interface (Lights Out)	L	L

Show Photo Info (Loupe View)

If you are in Loupe View and want to see some quick information about your photo you can press the ‘I’ key to cycle through the information overlay

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Show Photo Info	I	I

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Show the Photo Info with the ‘I’ Key. Press it again to cycle through the different views.

To change the size of the thumbnails in grid view you can use the ‘-‘ key to make them smaller and the ‘=‘ key to make them bigger.

Change Thumbnail Size (Grid View)

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Bigger Thumbnails	=	=
Smaller Thumbnails	–	–

Rating Photos

For many people, rating and colour coding photos is an integral part of their import process. Unfortunately it is one of the more tedious parts of the job. These keyboard shortcuts can help fly through the process

Auto-Advance

When dealing with a bunch of images it can often be very useful to have Lightroom automatically move to the next image as soon as you apply a star, colour rating or flag to each image.

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Toggle Auto-advance	Caps Lock	Caps Lock

Flags

Flags are a great way to mark your photos as ‘Picks’ that you want to look at later or ‘Rejects’ to be deleted. Three keyboard shortcuts help with this.

To read about how I use flags and stars to speed up my workflow you can read the article ‘Lightroom Workflow – 6 Simple Steps‘

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Set ‘Pick’ Flag	P	P
Set ‘Reject’ Flag	R	R
Remove All Flags	U	U

Star Ratings

Star ratings are another great way to categorise your photos for future use. You can use keyboard shortcuts to make this easy. The number keys represent how many stars to give:

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Set Star Rating	1 – 5	1 – 5
Remove Star Rating	0	0

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Use keyboard shortcuts to assign flags, star ratings and colour tags

Colour Ratings

Colour rating keys are a little harder to remember, but if you use them often it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. You could put some coloured dots on your keyboard if you have trouble.

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Set Red Tag	6	6
Set Yellow Tag	7	7
Set Green Tag	8	8
Set Blue Tag	9	9

Quick Collections

Quick collections are great for collection a temporary group of photos (eg, choosing a set of favourites for a calendar project). There are many keyboard shortcuts for dealing with collections, but there are a couple of shortcuts that get the most use.

You can easily set which collection is the ‘Target’ collection (where the photos will be sent) by right-clicking on the title and choosing ‘Set As Target Collection’

To remove all photos from the collection press ‘Ctrl + Shift + B’. This won’t delete the photos from Lightroom, it will just remove them from the target collection.

To add the current photo to the collection just hit ‘B’. Press ‘B’ again to remove it.

To show the photos in the Quick Collection press ‘Ctrl-B’

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Empty Quick Collection	Ctrl + Shift + B	Command + Shift + B
Add/Remove to Quick Collection	B	B

More Shortcuts

As I mentioned at the start of the article, there are many, MANY short cuts that you can use to speed up working with Lightroom. You can view the full list over at the Adobe website:

Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts

You can also press ‘Ctrl + /‘ to show a list of shortcuts for the module you are currently working in. Great if you forget something and want to quickly look it up.

The List

Action	Windows Keys	Mac Keys
Enter Grid View	G	G
Enter Loupe View	E	E
View Previous / Next Photo	Arrow Keys	Arrow Keys
Zoom to 100%	Z	Z
Show / Hide Side Panels	Tab	Tab
Show / Hide Filmstrip	F6	F6
Dim The Interface (Lights Out)	L	L
Show Photo Info (Loupe View)	I	I
Bigger Thumbnails (Grid View)	=	=
Smaller Thumbnails (Grid View)	–	–
Toggle Auto-advance	Caps Lock	Caps Lock
Set ‘Pick’ Flag	P	P
Set ‘Rejected’ Flag	R	R
Remove All Flags	U	U
Set Star Rating	1 – 5	1 – 5
Remove Start Rating	0	0
Set Red Tag	6	6
Set Yellow Tag	7	7
Set Green Tag	8	8
Set Blue Tag	9	9
Empty Quick Collection	Ctrl + Shift + B	Command + Shift + B
Add/Remove From Quick Collection	B	B