Learning a new software often comes out of necessity and not the unfathomable joy of watching yet another tutorial. We lead busy and sometimes even productive lives that cause us to streamline our ongoing education. We learn what we need to know in order to accomplish what needs to get done, but this can leave important gaps in our fundamental knowledge that will cause us problems in the future. With a robust feature set, as found in Lightroom, the small bits of missing knowledge will aggregate to create a workflow that is less efficient and probably frustrating, which leads us back to the rabbit hole of software tutorials online. So, here is Anthony Morganti with some Lightroom tips to help you fill in the gaps.

Customizing Your Workspace in Lightroom

Learning shortcuts saves us from returning to the various toolbars and clicking through layers of menus. We access them by right-clicking, pressing specific keys, or a combination of keys. But, if we don’t know what they are, we may use them and be unable to reverse the changes we’ve made. Anthony covers a lot in this video so, here are a few highlights.

Tab & Shift Keys

Tab – Removes the left and right panels


Tab + Shift – Removes all four panels

Function Key Shortcuts
fn + F5 – Removes the top panel
fn + F6 – Removes the bottom panel
fn + F7 – Removes the left panel
fn + F8 – Removes the right panel

*For Mac users that want to bypass pressing the ‘fn’ key, you can fully activate your Function Keys by going to (System Preferences > Keyboard) and under the “Keyboard” tab, check the box Use F1, F2 etc. as standard function keys.

 Right-clicking

By right-clicking the various modules, panels, and menus, Lightroom gives you the option to customize them by selecting or deselecting what is contained in them. After you right-click an area, a small menu should pop up with the active features displaying a checkmark next to them. Click on them to remove the checkmark and deactivate the features you don’t want.

Learning gear, techniques, and software the right way is always the best course to pursue, but when life gets in the way, it’s good to have resources like these to supplement your education.

More Lightroom Tips

BEGINNER LIGHTROOM TIPS | EXPLORING LIGHTROOM’S SEVEN MODULES

LIGHTROOM TIPS | THE VARIOUS WAYS TO USE THE RADIAL FILTER

60 SECOND LIGHTROOM TIPS | 7 WAYS TO MOVE SLIDERS IN LIGHTROOM

LIGHTROOM BETTER & FASTER | 3 TIPS TO GET MORE SPEED & PRECISION WITHIN LIGHTROOM

LIGHTROOM TIPS | HOW TO FIX PERSPECTIVE & DISTORTION IN LIGHTROOM