A Simple Move For Lightroom Classic Users That Makes a Big Difference
PROGRAMMING NOTE: There’s no episode of The Grid this week as the Outdoor Photography Conference kicks off tomorrow. It’s not too late to join us and get in on two incredible days of education and fun. There is a first-timer orientation today followed by a pre-conference session with the one and only Rick Sammon on “What makes a great Outdoor Photo.” Hope you can join us — we’ve got an incredible team of instructors (seen above), and I’ve got some really cool post-processing techniques to share. Here’s the link for tickets, along with the full conference schedule.
This is one of those little things you might not think about, but it can change the way you work when you’re editing in the Develop Module. In Lightroom Classic we have a stack of left side panels and right side panels. The left side panels are used the least because the thing you do there the most is to choose which image(s) you want to work on. Once you’ve picked your image (or collection of images, or Folder, etc.), you don’t need to keep that panel open at all — it’s just making your image smaller.
That’s why when I take an image over to the Develop Module, usually the first thing I do is to CLOSE to left side panels by pressing F7 on my keyboard. We need the right side panels open because that’s where we do all our editing, but those left side panels are, most of the time, just taking up space and making our image smaller on screen.
Note: If your image doesn’t jump up to fit most of the Preview area like this, make sure you have “Fit” selected at the top of the Navigator panel at the top of the left side panels.
Lightroom “cloud’s” interface is designed to work like already this because when you open the right side panels to start editing, it automatically closes the left side panels. Would love to see that feature added to Classic (hint, hint, Lightroom Classic team).
Hope you found that helpful. Looking forward to hanging out with everybody this week at the conference. Here’s wishing you a safe, happy, healthy, and fun week!
-Scott
