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[Quick Tips To Make You More Efficient in Lightroom]

[with Ben Willmore] [Ben Willmore] Here's some quick tips

for being more effective in Lightroom. Let's start talking about some keyboard shortcuts that can help you switch between different views and different parts of Lightroom. Here I'm viewing an image

where it fills a lot of my screen and I'd like to get back to the grid of thumbnail images that we often see. You can do that using an icon

at the bottom of your screen down here and then using the icon next to it

to zoom back in to your image. But I do it so frequently

that I like to use the keyboard. On the keyboard, all I need to do is type

the letter G for the Grid or press the Spacebar to get it to Fill my screen. So G for grid and Spacebar for Filling. You can also have your picture fill your entire screen. So if you don't want to see

the Lightroom interface anywhere, type the letter F for Full screen. If you want to get out of Full screen,

go G for Grid. Then if you want to switch

between the Library module and the Develop module where you can go

and adjust your pictures, just press D for Develop and you'll be in that area

where you'll find your adjustment sliders. You want to get back to the Library,

just type G, G for Grid. Now when we're in the grid,

here we see our thumbnail images. I often want to change their size. And there is a slider in the lower right

to adjust your thumbnail size, but I prefer to use my keyboard

because all I need to do is press the plus or the minus keys on my keyboard. And it makes it quick and easy. Then when you're working

with the modules in Lightroom, there's a whole bunch of modules up here,

but you might only use a few of them. I primarily used the Library,

Develop, and Print modules. If you find there are any modules you don't use, then press the right mouse button

on top of the name of any module. And then you can turn off a module just to simplify the interface.

So if you never make books, hide the Book module. If you never use the map,

hide the Map module. And if you get it down to only those modules

that you actually use, I think you'll be faster

when you're trying to move around in Lightroom. Then let's say we're in the Develop module. Here we can have a whole bunch of sliders

available for adjusting our picture. And I can expand each area. But what can happen is

if you get all these areas open, there's so many options available it's hard to kind of get a feeling for where you are. What I like to do when I'm in the Develop module is go to the triangle next to any section, like here the Basic section, and If you press the right mouse button, you'll find first you can hide any of these sections. So if you absolutely never use the section

called camera calibration you could hide it. You can always get it back later

by right clicking on that same right arrow and turning on or off another section. But the setting I really find useful in that area is one called Solo Mode. In Solo Mode,

only one of these sections will be visible at a time. That means if I'm done working here

with the sliders available in the Basic section, I click down here on something called Tone Curve and it automatically collapses

whatever section I was using last making it so I only see one section at a time. And that way it never really feels overwhelming because I never really can see everything at once. I'm only seeing what I want to concentrate on. All right, now let's talk about adjusting our pictures. Here I have a bunch of images, and I notice that these four ones on the end

are very similar. They might need similar adjustments. So I'm going to click on the first image of that series. I'll hold down Shift,

then I'll click on the last image. Then I'll go to the Develop module. And let's talk about some settings

at the bottom of my screen. Down there, there's something

that looks almost like a light switch. It's right here, right next to the word Sync. That little switch determines if the sliders

that I use to adjust my picture will affect only this image that I'm looking at or if it will affect all of the images

I currently have selected because remember I selected

a bunch of images that looked similar. So if I right now darken the image using Exposure and I go back to the Library, we'll find that only one image got darker. If I go back to Develop

and I turn that little switch on, now any change that I make

will affect all of those images so I'll make it even darker again. And I'll bring up Clarity possibly

to make the detail pop out, and if I go back to Library,

it might take just a moment for it to update, but eventually we should see

all of the other images reflect the same change. So whenever you have similar images like these, you go to the Develop module and just glance down there and see if that little switch

is turned on or not. When it's turned on, it will indicate Auto Sync next to it, and that means that all of those images

will change at the same time. If you don't see the words Auto Sync, then know that you're only going to affect one image. Then let's say I'm working with these images and this one here,

I want to have more than one version of it. I'd like to have a black and white version,

and I'd also like to crop it so it's a vertical version. Well, if you're not working in Lightroom, then usually we'd have to duplicate each file. And each time you duplicate it,

it will double the amount of space it's taking up. But in Lightroom, you can create

what looks like a duplicate but it doesn't really increase the amount of space that's taken up on your hard drive,

and here's how you do that. If you click on the image you're thinking about,

you can go to the Photo menu. And about halfway down, you'll find

a choice called Create Virtual Copy. And when you choose that,

you'll have two versions of the same picture. The second version

will have the lower left corner turned up just to indicate that its different. That means its a virtual copy. Then I can go to the Develop module,

and in this case I'm going to crop this image. With the Crop tool, just pull over the side. Maybe concentrate on the upper left. If I turn off this little lock symbol

on the right side of my screen, I'll be able to change the orientation

to make it more of a vertical. Go back to my Library and I'll see I have now

both a horizontal and a vertical. Well, I can make as many virtual copies as I'd like. Just go back to the Photo menu,

choose Create Virtual Copy and I'll have another. Head back into the Develop module, and this time, I'll make it black and white by just clicking the text Black & White. Go back to Library and we see

we now have a total of three versions. But if I go and look on my hard drive

at where these files are actually located I'll right click on any one of them,

and there's a choice called Show in Finder. And that will send me out of Lightroom

into my operating system where I can see these files. And if you look, the file I started with,

it's file name is one. And in here, we have one file for that. And so the total number of files in this folder

if you count them is eight. And that's the total number of original files

that are in Lightroom as well. These virtual copies do not duplicate any files at all. In fact, they only show up in Lightroom. And therefore you can experiment and create

as many different variations as you'd like. Then let's say I like this black and white version, and I wish that the horizontal orientation version

had the same black and white effect. But I don't remember how I made it. Somehow I just want to get it over there. Well, you can right click on any image and you'll find a bunch of options, but one of the choices is called Develop Settings. Develop Settings means the settings

you applied in the Develop module. And here I can copy the settings

off of this particular image. It will ask me exactly which settings I'd like to copy. In this case it's set up to only copy the cropping,

and let's try that. Now I can go to the horizontal version of the picture. I right click again,

and there's a choice called Develop Settings. And I'll just say let's paste the ones we copied. Since all we copied was the cropping, now what used to be a horizontal picture

should turn into a vertical. And so any time you adjust one picture, you make it look great,

and then you notice you have five more images that have very similar qualities. You could copy the settings

off of the one you've already adjusted and paste them on to the ones that look similar, can save you a lot of time. I hope those quick tips help you become

much more effective using Lightroom.