For years I used both Photoshop and then later lightroom without leveraging the use of keyboard shortcuts. Once I started using shortcuts my image processing time was cut by more than half. In this article you’ll learn what I think are three of the most important shortcuts to speed up workflow in lightroom.
Copy/Paste Develop Settings
Certainly you’ve ran into this problem before. You spend time, making adjustments to a photo, then spend the next few minutes figuring out how to make those same adjustments to a selection of photos. Sure this can be done by fumbling your way through a massive list generated by right clicks, but it can also be done using basic keyboard shortcuts. To copy development settings, use Ctrl + Shift + C, and to paste these settings onto a new image, use Ctrl + Shift + V.
Before & After
Personally, I use Lightroom to show work to my clients on the fly. While my website is designed for that exact purpose, I don’t always have wifi available to show off a web format portfolio. I like Lightroom’s interface to help highlight my work, and one of my absolute features to prove myself not only as a photographer, but a retoucher, is the Before and After system built into Lightroom using the Y key. This allows you to show all the processing that goes into your photos after the photo session is complete, and can help establish patience in your clients.
Open In Photoshop
As stated above, Lightroom is a wonderful system for photographers, but does not replace the need for Photoshop. Sometimes, in order to correctly retouch your images, you need all the tools within Photoshop to do so, and Lightroom makes it easy, by simply pressing Ctrl + E.
For more shortcuts on the rating system and searching metadata see the original article here.
Source: Zach Sutton Photofocus
Image Source: Yu Morita
