Happy Friday everybody!  Just a friendly reminder: if you missed, didn’t read or forgot my official disclaimer for this series posted at the beginning of #1, please give it a quick read, so we all stay on the same page. Now, without further ado (yes, that was “ado”) I bring you #6:
#6: Only See The Stuff You’re Actually Using By Turning On “Solo Mode”
When I’m teaching a hands-on workshop, I hear a steady number of comments about how intimidating Lightroom seems, but after talking one-on-one with a lot of these folks, I realized one of main reasons it feels so intimidating is that they’re seeing so much of it all at once.
For example, when you’re using the Develop Module, and you scroll down in the right side panels, you just keep scrolling and scrolling past all these panels with all these sliders, and just feels like there’s information overload. Most new users will only use just a few of these panels, but even though they’re only going to use just a few, they still have to see them all in their daily workflow, which not only intimates, but the constant scrolling gets tedious and starts to bog you down. This is precisely why I absolutely LOVE Solo mode, which collapses all the side panels and just shows you the panel you’re currently working in. It’s an instant clutter/stress remover and it puts the focus just on the panel you’re working in — keeping distractions to a minimum.
To turn on Solo Mode, just right-click to the left of any panel’s name and a pop-up menu appears (seen here). To turn on Solo Mode, just choose it from the menu (as shown here). That’s now. Now, when you click on a panel, all the others collapse to just their title (hiding all the sliders and controls), and now all you see is the one you clicked it. Try it once, and you’ll be hooked for life. It’s another “less is more” thing.
There ya have it!
One more thing
This week I released another Lightroom online training class: in this one I take you through how to set-up to shoot tethered directly into Lightroom (including how to troubleshoot when things get wonky), and I take you through how to incorporate Lightroom Mobile into your portrait photography workflow. If you’re a KelbyOne subscriber, you can check it out right here. If you’re not a KelbyOne subscriber, whatdaya waitin’ fer? —  Here’s the link.
Hope you all have a fantastic shootin’ and pollutin’ weekend (I have no idea what that means), and I hope to see you back here on Monday for #7 in my 10 Things I Would Tell a New Lightroom User” series.
Best,
-Scott
