Hidden Lightroom features in the Library Module

There’s no question that Adobe Lightroom is a powerful piece of photo editing software. Underneath the surface are numerous hidden features that many people overlook. From secret key commands to overlooked menu items, I’m going to shed some light of the industry’s leading photo editing software.

The video below is a step by step guide into some of Lightroom’s lesser known features in the Library Module. The text below is designed to be used as a quick reference to go along with the video.

Part 2 ( The Develop Module ) will be released shortly. Subscribe to this blog to be notified when it goes online.


IDENTITY PLATE

Adobe allows users to replace the Adobe Lightroom text in the upper left corner with a logo or text of their own. This feature is particularly useful to anyone who will be showing clients their work directly in LR.

1. Choose Lightroom Classic > Identity Plate Setup (Mac OS) or Edit > Identity Plate Setup (Windows)

2. Once you are in the identity plate editor, you can choose Use a styled text identity plate or Use a graphical identity plate. If you simply want to add your own customized text choose the first option. If you have a graphic that you’d like to add choose the latter.

Graphics are limited to 41 pixels high (Mac OS) or 46 pixels high (Windows) The graphic can be a JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PDF, or PSD (Mac OS) or BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, or TIFF (Windows).

3. Make sure that Enable Identity Plate is checked in the upper left corner of the identity plate editor.

4. you can save your identity plate as a preset by clicking the “Custom” drop down menu and choosing Save As…


HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR LIGHTROOM CATALOG

Your Lightroom catalog needs to be optimized in order to keep it running smoothly. If you fail to optimize your catalog regularly it will begin to run slowly. People who have large catalogs and edit regularly should optimize their catalog every week or two in order to keep them in tip top shape. The process is very easy and usually takes a few minutes to complete. The larger your catalog, the longer it will take to optimize.

• File > Optimize Catalog


REFINE PHOTOS

Lightroom has a built in feature to help you cull your photos. It’s called Refine Photos and can be a useful for photographers who have to sort through hundreds of images. The Refine Photos option turns un-flagged images into reject images and Pick flagged images into un-flagged images.

Refine Photos in Ligtroom


The idea is that you can go through the process of refining your photos a number of times until you get your images narrowed down to a manageable selection.

To begin the process navigate to Library > Refine Photos. Once you click Refine Photos, Lightroom will automatically turn on the Pickflag and un-flagged images filter so any rejected images are hidden from view. This allows you to repeat the process one or more times until you have the number of photos that you need. Remember to turn the filters off by clicking the flag icons off in the Toolbar (press the T key to hide/show) or Filter Bar (press / key to hide/show)


FIND MISSING PHOTOS

Have you ever been curious if there are any offline or missing photos in your Lightroom Catalog? Luckily it is very easy to find out if you are.

Navigate to Library > Find Missing Photos

how to find missing photos in Lightroom


Any missing photo will be populated in a Missing Photographs Collection that is located in the Catalog Tab in the Library module.

Learn post processing



VALIDATING DNG FILES

The DNG format contains a checksum validation feature, which can be used to spot a corrupted DNG file. This is a useful feature for people who use DNG files for archiving. When you want to check on the condition of your DNG files go Library > Validate DNG Files.
The process usually takes a few minutes to complete.


SYNCHRONIZE FOLDER


Sometimes images will become out of sync with a Lightroom Catalog. This happens when a folder in Lightroom has images within it that are not being referenced by the catalog. This could hapen if you manually added photos to a folder via your computer’s operating system instead of using Lightroom to import. It can also happen if you open an image from Lightroom in Photoshop and then close Lightroom before you save the file in Photoshop. It can also happen when using the save as option in Photoshop multiple times.

You can synchronize a single folder or even multiple folders at a time by choosing a parent folder.

To synchronize a folder:

1. Make sure that you are in the Library Module, then choose the folder that you want to sync.

2. Navigate to Library > Synchronize Folder. Alternatively you can Control Click (Mac) or Right Click (PC) on the folder that you want to sync and choose Synchronize Folder

3. A dialog box will pop up showing how many images are out of sync. Check the import new photos box. It is a good idea to check Open import dialog box before importing too. This will show you the photos that are out of sync before you import them.


MIRROR IMAGE MODE

Lightroom’s mirror image mode is designed for portrait photographers who want to share mirrored images with a client who thinks the originals do not look like them. People are used to looking at themselves in the mirror so when they see a photo of themselves it is the opposite of what they are used to seeing.

The mirror image feature only changes how the images appear in the Lightroom interface. They fill not be exported as mirrored images.


QUICK COLLECTIONS & TARGET COLLECTIONS

QUICK COLLECTIONS

There are times when you will want add some of your photos to a temporary collection. This collection is known as a Quick Collection and can be found in the Collection Tab in the top left panel of the Library Module. There are various reasons for using the Quick Collection including, organizing images that you want to work on later and organizing images that you want to export later. You may also want to compare images from different folders or sync develop settings between photos that are located in various folders.

You can add an image to the Quick Collection while in either the Library or Develop Modules. To do so, click the circle in the upper right hand corner of any thumbnail. Note that you have to hover over the thumbnail to see the circle appear unless the image is already in the Quick Collection.

The B key is the keyboard shortcut to add or remove a selected image from a quick collection. You can add or remove multiple images to the Quick Collection at a single time in the Grid View of the Library Module. To do this select multiple images and then press the B Key or click on the circle icon.

You can save a Quick Collection as a regular collection by Control clicking (Mac) or Right Clicking (PC) on the quick collection folder and choosing Save Quick Collection…

TARGET COLLECTIONS

In addition to Quick Collections, Lightroom allows users to assign any collection in the Collections Tab as a Target Collection. The concept is exactly the same as outlined in the Quick Collection section above, except the images go to the collection of your choice instead of the Quick Collection folder.

How to set a target collection in Lightroom

1. To set up a Target Collection, Control Click (Mac) or Right Click (PC) on the collection that you want to set up as a Target Collection.

2. Choose: Set as Target Collection

3. Whenever you press the B Key or click the Add To Target Collection icon the image or images will be added to the collection that you just set up.

4. If you would like to change the Target Collection back to the Quick Collection, Simply Control Click (Mac) or Right Click (PC) on the Quick Collection folder in the Catalog Tab and choose Set as Target Collection.