Lightroom is designed to be fast, and while the user interface is pretty quick, there’s still another way to make those edits faster: the keyboard. But there’s a problem. Adobe’s list of Lightroom shortcuts is somewhere in the ballpark of 300 combinations – pretty impressive for a laptop’s 80-some keys.
More: Keys to the kingdom: The most useful Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts
Unless you use a keyboard skin or you have a photographic memory, you’re probably not going to be whizzing through your edits using every memorized hot key anytime soon. Thankfully, several of the most helpful keyboard shortcuts aren’t too difficult to remember. Here are 18 of our most-often used Lightroom shortcuts, and an easy way to remember them.
Shortcuts for organizing and flagging photos
Many photographers who start with digital, shoot many more photos then they actually need (I’m so guilty of this that my first newsroom editor nicknamed me, Pepper). Keyboard shortcuts make quick work of picking out the best shots. Most users know that you can use the arrow keys to navigate to the next image and the backspace or delete key to remove photos, but there are a number of other commands that are (almost) as easy to remember.
Action
Windows Command
MacOS Command
Memory Trick
Switch to the compare View, to see two photos side-by-side
C
C
C is for for Compare
Zoom
Z
Z
Z is for Zoom
Add a Flag
P
P
P is for Pick
Unflag
U
U
U is for Unflag
Select all flagged photos
Control + Alt + A
Command + Option + A
Control or Command A works in a number of apps to select everything — just add an Alt or Option to select only the flagged photos
Reject photo
X
X
Cross out that photo
Delete all rejects
Control + Backspace
Command + Delete
Just add control or command to the delete keyboard shortcut to control all those rejects
Add a star rating
Number keys 1-5
Number keys 1-5
This one really is as easy as 1-2-3
Add a color label
6 – Red
7 – Yellow
8 – Green
9 – Blue
6 – Red
7 – Yellow
8 – Green
9- Blue
Color labels are used in the order of the rainbow: Remember ROY G. BIV? Just skip the vowels.
Add a keyword
Control + K
Command + K
K is for Keyword
One more handy trick — Hold down shift to move to the next photo after marking, this trick works for flagging, star ratings, color labels and rejecting a photo.