My 3 Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts in Lightroom 5

Hey everyone. I’m just getting back into the swing of things after last week’s Photoshop World. There was definitely big buzz around the public beta of Lightroom 5 and everyone seemed really excited to get back to try it out. While you’re still getting used to it and kicked the tires, I thought I’d share 3 keyboard shortcuts I find essential in the new version.

1) Full Screen Preview – It’s funny how the little things that get changed between versions of Lightroom can mean so much. For me, a full screen preview is something I use every single day. I like to see my photos without the clutter of the interface around them when I’m making my edits. Before Lightroom 5 you had to press like 3 keys and you still didn’t get a great looking Full Screen preview of your photos. It looked something like this:

Now, all we have to do is press the F key once and you get a real full-screen preview that looks something like this.

2) The Radial Filter – This new filter is going to get used a lot by me. I’m a vignette junkie and I’ve always hated how it just goes into the center of the photo. So the Radial Filter is a must have for me and knowing it’s keyboard shortcut (which is Shift M by the way) has become essential.

3) Inverting the Radial Filter – Building on the shortcut above, I’ve found that sometimes I want to invert the way the Radial filter works. Meaning that you’re basically flipping it. Rather than the filter affecting the middle and gradually fading off toward the edges, you can tell it to do the opposite by hitting the Apostrophe key.

So there’s my top 3 keyboard shortcuts (so far) in Lightroom 5. Enjoy!