Lightroom Tips

Tip – Grid Thumbnail Sizes

Here’s a quick and dirty tip to close out the week with. Sadly, after over 2 years of using Lightroom, I just found this one this past week. Anyway, here it is. You know when you’re in the Library module and you’re looking through your photos using the Grid view (just press G). Well, if you want to increase or decrease the size of the thumbnail you see just press the + or – keys (plus or minus). That’s it. Nothing earth shattering but trust me, you’ll use it more then you think. Enjoy folks and if you’re in the US ,have a great/safe Memorial Day weekend.

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31 comments

  1. Jeanne 5 March, 2021 at 08:53 Reply

    Thank you. I keep losing the slider that is supposed to be at the bottom of the window between the grid and the filmstrip at the very bottom. This makes it so much easier. I have been using Lightroom since version 3 came out and read several books, taken numerous courses and no one mentioned this simple and very useful tip. Very much appreciated.

  2. Cynthia Jones 22 July, 2010 at 13:05 Reply

    Is there a way to increase the size of an adobe thumnail. It would save me a ton of time, as I have to scan, rename the doc and download into another data base.

  3. Bill M 26 July, 2009 at 20:25 Reply

    I have the same problem as a number of others – Vista PC – “-” works as advertised, “+” doe nothing, but “=” as “Tim” mentioned, works.

  4. Sara 17 July, 2009 at 17:00 Reply

    Thanks for this tip, I was hopeful that I would figure it out one day! 🙂 I’m running Win Vista and it’s the + and – keys vs. the number pad.

  5. Sam Antonios 25 May, 2009 at 22:53 Reply

    Hi Matt

    You might have answered this on other posts so I apologize. I still have a hard time understanding and figuring out color profiles and spaces.
    LR uses ProPhoto but photoshop doesn’t ( i have mine set to Adobe 1998). Monitors get calibrated by different softwares ( I used spyder after reading about it online). Photo papers need their own color profiles from each manufacturer… How do all these “parameters” come into play together? how do they interact?

  6. Mathias 25 May, 2009 at 10:35 Reply

    The + doesn’t work on my Swedish keyboard, XP, HP7400
    but the – does.
    There is quite some other shortcuts which do not work.

    /Mathias

  7. fabiopb 24 May, 2009 at 09:59 Reply

    Windows XP SP3, english OS, brazilian abnt2 keyboard layout.

    “-” works on numeric keypad
    “-” and “=” work on the standard keyboard.

    Great tip.

  8. jordi carreras 23 May, 2009 at 12:02 Reply

    I prove it, and it possible with the “.” increase, and “-” decrease. I use a spanish keyboard.

    Another shorcut! Thanks!

  9. Kathy 23 May, 2009 at 00:13 Reply

    I have an question unrelated to this topic, but didn’t know a better way to ask. In the Lightroom Print module, when you are using a template that allows more than one image, is there a way to specify how the images are placed? From what I can see, they are placed in the grid by the way they are displayed in the filmstrip grid. I am learning to use the Print module, but this one has me stumped.

  10. Michelle 22 May, 2009 at 19:08 Reply

    Thanks for this Matt, I actually discovered this on Wednesday when I couldn’t remember how to change the thumbnail size. Works great on my Mac!

  11. Mike Wong 22 May, 2009 at 19:07 Reply

    Thanks for the tip Matt. I had no idea. All this time with my wife looking over my shoulder asking me to make the pictures bigger with me grabbing that slider back and forth….

  12. Lars 22 May, 2009 at 18:33 Reply

    For those of you where ‘+’ isn’t working – try ‘#’ instead. It works for me (Windows, german LR2).

    And for showing shortcuts for the current module, try Ctrl-< .

  13. russcam 22 May, 2009 at 15:31 Reply

    + and – for grid thumb change only seems to work when grid is on main application screen, not secondary screen. 🙁

  14. Carl B. 22 May, 2009 at 13:59 Reply

    Some of the hotkeys in Lightroom do not work if you have a non US keyboard, at least this is the case on XPsp3. [+] happens to be a remapped in my native keyboard layout (Norwegian) and does not work. [-] works. I have US English keyboard mappings installed too and switching to that brings [+] back to life. The numeric keypad [+] does not work at all.

    I sure wish we could remap commands like we can in PS

    – Carl

  15. Tim 22 May, 2009 at 13:04 Reply

    On my PC (Vista), it’s actually the ‘minus’ key and the ‘equals’ key. The keypad plus doesn’t work, but the minus does.

    What an odd choice. I guess if you don’t have a keypad it saves you from having to press the shift key to increase size.

    -Tim

  16. Jim Stamates 22 May, 2009 at 13:02 Reply

    Pressing the command key then + will jump to loop view then command – will get you back to grid. Yes, you can use the E and G keys to do the same thing but if you are already using the + – keys to enlarge the thumbnails this is a quick way to see a large version and go back.

    Jim

  17. Dorin Nicolaescu-Mustea?? 22 May, 2009 at 09:32 Reply

    > Have you ever wanted to have no image selected in the Library Module? If you do, just hit the “/” key and no image will be selected and the Navigator window will become blank.

    Not quite true. Slash (/) deselects the primary select only. If you have multiple images selected, the others will stay selected.

    Ctrl/Cmd+D, however, does indeed deselect all images.

  18. Kathleen D 22 May, 2009 at 09:27 Reply

    Wondering if you could explain the difference between sharpening during develop mode and sharpening in print mode. I thought if you sharpened in the develop mode (which I do), then you ignored the print sharpening. But heard someone mention the need to do both. I have never picked that up before and would like more clarification.

    Thanks.

  19. Marty Cohen 22 May, 2009 at 09:25 Reply

    Works perfectly on my Mac. Unbelievable we had no clue about that one. I can see using it quite a bit. Really convenient….
    Thanks Matt……

    Here’s another quick Lightroom tip.
    Have you ever wanted to have no image selected in the Library Module? If you do, just hit the “/” key and no image will be selected and the Navigator window will become blank. Where this is useful is when you are importing Presets in the Develop Module. If you happen to have an image selected when you import Develop Module Presets, the last one imported will be applied to the image that happens to be selected at the time (which, you most likely won’t want to have happen). So, before importing these presets, go to the Library Module (press “G” key), then hit the “/” key to deselect the currently selected image. Next, go back to the Develop Module (press “D” key) and do your Preset importing.

    Marty

  20. Antonio Biggio 22 May, 2009 at 07:27 Reply

    Thank Matt,
    but in my mac it’s possible just decrease (-) and not increase (+). I don’t understanding why.

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