Customize Develop Panel
Back in the December 2018 update a new functionality was added to the panels in the Develop module, and I’ve been wondering how many people have taken advantage of this new feature? I admit to being so used to/comfortable with the default order that I’ve not made any change that I felt that strongly about.
How does it work? Well, if you right-click any panel header on the right side of the Develop module (below the Histogram) you’ll see a contextual menu with Customize Develop Panel at the top.
Click that to open the Customize Develop Panel dialog box, where you can change the vertical order of the panels on the right side. You can also uncheck the box next to any panel to hide that panel from view (though we’ve always been able to hide panels).
Just click and drag the panels up and down to create any order that suits your workflow. The best I’ve come up with is sorting them from most frequently accessed to least (by me) from top to bottom. I can’t say as it has revolutionized my workflow, but I guess it makes a more logical workflow to me.
Once you’ve arranged the panels to your liking, click the Save button at the bottom. You’ll be prompted to re-launch Lightroom for the change to take effect (or re-launch later if you are not ready to quit just yet).
If you ever change your mind, just right-click one of the panel headers again and open the dialog back up. At the bottom is the Default Order button that will put the panels back to the way they were before.
I’ve been using Solo mode (also accessible via right-clicking a panel header) for years, which means I usually only have one panel open at a time, so it just wasn’t too much of a hardship to reach a little further for the desired panel.
Has anyone come up with a change that they do feel has made their workflow noticeably more efficient? Or is just demoting the less-used panels the best case scenario?
Hi
I’m using Lightroom classic on my Dell Desktop. Is it possible to customize the on/off buttons in the Develop Module so that it the button turns green when turned on and red when turned off or am I asking the impossible?
All the best
Gerry
I don’t know what you mean by the on/off buttons, but there isn’t any way to customize the color of any buttons in Lightroom.
It would be awesome if we could have multiple columns for the develop panel so I don’t spend so much time scrolling up and down.
While it is nice to have the ability to customize the Develop panel, I find myself not really benefitting from it. I am always in Solo mode because I hate the yo-yo-scrolling one has to do with it off. That said, I tried to demote the least-used to the bottom of the list and found that my habitual muscle memory that was used to the default now got stuck when trying to go to one of the panels and it wasn’t where it was “supposed to be.” Great article explaining it all, though, Rob!
I’m a huge fan of the new customized develop panel. It’s really sped up my workflow because I can go through the panels in the order I use them. I’ve never been a fan of solo mode because often I like to quickly see my adjustments on several panels at once with just a fast swipe. For me, this was long-awaited. Next wish: Different brush sizes for the Heal/Clone tool!
Eric, That’s great to hear. Thanks for sharing how you use it.
This is an informative post Rob. Thanks. If I may go back to about last November. Out of desperation I asked you here if you could help with a problem signing out of Lightroom and Photoshop. I was getting a white screen with a spinning blue circle and not able to sign out. It got worse after awhile I could not sign in, same problem. I called Adobe on Feb.8, 2019. They were of no help, could not fix it. They were to have a senior techie call me. They never called. They did charge my credit card for the monthly fee though. Well yesterday I came across some posts on an Adobe fourm by people having the same problem. A lot of people. One guy said he had a fix for it. And he did. I tried his suggestion and it worked. Here it is. PC anyway. Go to Internet Options, go to the Advanced tab, go to Security, scroll down and uncheck Do Not Save Encrypted Pages To Disk. That’s the fix. It worked. Why does no one at Adobe know this? The answer is on their forum, they should read it once in awhile.
Joe, thanks for following up. I’ll make a note of that in case I encounter someone else with the issue.