When it comes to using Lightroom, or any of the major post processing software, it’s been my experience that a vast majority of users really only know about 25% or so of the software’s capabilities. That, coupled with the fact many are about as adventurous as a hermit living next to minefield, means that there’s so much more to, and to be had out of software that’s just going to waste. This is a shame, because the upsides to knowing your software back to front and inside and out is that you can increase the speed of your workflow, and actually get more creative. It’s all sort of wu-wei.

One of the best ways to take advantage of the software is to assign hotkeys and know your shortcuts. You’d be surprised how much time is wasted within the course of an edit (or a year) just moving the mouse cursor between points on the screen to select options from various menus. In order to use Lightroom as best as possible you must absolutely deploy these tools. Perhaps the most useful would be the Alt/Opt key, which literally transforms the program into something far greater that what you image, and to grasp those well I’ve broken down just how to do that within the following two articles:

Recently Ted Forbes from The Art Of Photography, has created a decent and concise video on other shortcuts that will give you a jumpstart in operating Lightroom more efficiently. He’ll cover various grades of operations from flagging, making selects, and switching view modes, as well as give some other keystroke cutting tools that let you progress to the next image when making selects and so on.

Anyway, it’s a good quick view for those starting out in Lightroom or those looking to just make your experience a little better, and quicker.