Lightroom Tips

I Have Two Lightroom Words For You – "Solo Mode"

I was in New York last week at Photo Plus East and I realized something. So many people don’t use one of my absolute favorite features for getting around in Lightroom. First… story time. See, I was walking through the expo and some one stopped me to say hi. He also had a Lightroom question. Well, the question got pretty involved so I asked him if he had his laptop there to show me (I figured it would save both of us time). So he opened his laptop and we were able to figure out his issue pretty fast.

In the process though, he was scrolling up and down the right side of the Develop module to get to the panel he wanted. So I asked if he knew what Solo Mode was. You’d think I gave him a million dollars when he saw what it did 🙂

What’s really interesting is that I saw the same guy the next day. He told me that he’d gone back to his studio (that he shares with several other photographers) and told them about it and none of them knew what Solo Mode was either. To add icing on the cake, I answered another LR question that day and showed the person Solo Mode and they almost kissed me (it was a guy so I stopped him 😉 ). At this point I realized two things: 1) I need to start charging for advice (totally just kidding!) and, 2) I needed to write a tip about Solo Mode.

What is Solo Mode?
Solo Mode automatically keeps only one panel open at a time. As you open another panel, the other automatically collapses. It’s great to keep you from having 7 panels open and scrolling up and down to switch panels. To turn it on, right-click on any dark gray area in your left or right side panels.

(click to see this larger)

You’ll see a pop-up menu show and Solo Mode will be one of those options. Just click it to turn it on. Don’t forget that turning it on in the right side of the Develop module only turns it on for those panels. You need to turn it on for the left side too. And it’s module specific so turning it on in Develop, doesn’t automatically turn it on for, say, the Library module.

Do you use Solo Mode? Weigh in and let us know if you agree? If not, give it a try. Once you turn it on, you’ll never go back. See ya!

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