Lightroom Tips

Tip: How To Turn Off The Annoying Photo Info Overlay

I think Lightroom is all about showcasing your photos and making them look great. To me, nothing ruins that more than that annoying photo info overlay that appears in the top left of the photo in the Library and Develop module (see image below).

info

I’m in Colfax, Washington right now teaching a workshop along side of Bill Fortney and friends. While in the classroom today, I noticed that overlay on several of the screens from people in the class and you’d be amazed at the sigh of relief when I showed them that you just have to press the I key to turn it off. Yup… that’s it. Press the letter I to cycle through the different info overlays and eventually turn it off altogether.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day.

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93 comments

  1. Bruce Sorrell 25 June, 2023 at 11:21 Reply

    You are a lifesaver, my friend ! If you ever visit the Washington, DC area let me know. I owe you a goodly number of adult beverages as repayment for eliminating that useless overlay !

    Slainte !

  2. Tina 5 December, 2022 at 13:10 Reply

    My 3 year old was pressing keys on my laptop when I was out of the room (AGHHHH!!) luckily she didn’t do much damage but changed some things around in LR – thanks so much I couldn’t figure this out and it was driving me nuts!

  3. Kelcee Ivy 31 October, 2020 at 20:45 Reply

    I edit on my phone and it popped up. How do I get it to go away since there is no keyboard option on the phone?

  4. Amar 15 November, 2019 at 08:36 Reply

    Thank you for this. I had pressed I bymistake on my key board and was annoyed using this since a month. But thought to google today and first post by u. Thanks it was just few seconds and woof it’s gone. Thanks again.

  5. LaRita Desimpel 14 February, 2019 at 10:27 Reply

    Is there anywhere in the info overlay (or anywhere else in Lr) that tells you what shooting mode you took the image in?

  6. Dana Barkley 7 January, 2019 at 22:13 Reply

    Omg thank you! I googled this because I couldn’t take it anymore. And fixed it in 2 seconds thanks to this!

  7. Anne 30 April, 2018 at 14:17 Reply

    I still work with the old lightroom 5.7 – when I press l the whole screen goes black with exception of the photo – pressing 1 several times never gets rid of the overlay information 🙁

  8. Russell Ramsey 1 February, 2018 at 11:06 Reply

    Thank you as something so easy should be in the “How To” books under Text Removal or some easily found subject in their indexes.

  9. Rae 11 December, 2017 at 10:01 Reply

    I honestly can’t believe I’ve been putting up with this annoying overlay for months! I must have accidentally clicked ‘I’ only when attempting to import images using keyboard shortcuts. Thank you so much!

  10. Mike 4 July, 2017 at 13:35 Reply

    How about having the info overlay appear only on the main monitor and having the second monitor free of any overlay for full unabridged preview?

  11. Laura 20 April, 2017 at 16:14 Reply

    Oh My God. One hour of cursing at Lightroom and this is all I needed to know. Thank you. You have literally saved my life.

  12. Michael Lachowski 26 September, 2016 at 13:56 Reply

    It’s so annoying when you use some keyboard command incorrectly and end up with something changing but you have no idea what you did to initiate it, then can’t find a menu item anywhere to figure it out. Thank you for telling us which key to hit!

  13. Linda 26 July, 2016 at 20:32 Reply

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! I just googled how to get rid of the file name and I found this post. I had zero clue why it started showing up in the first place. I can’t believe that I just had to hit the letter I twice. Thanks again.

  14. Pam 26 July, 2016 at 09:39 Reply

    Thank you!! I had this off and my cat who has a tendency to walk on my keyboard turned it on and I couldn’t figure out how she did it! Its been driving me crazy

  15. nike air max 90 4 June, 2016 at 08:07 Reply

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  16. Kimberly 19 August, 2015 at 09:41 Reply

    Seriously, my cat took a snooze on my keyboard and hit a bunch of buttons. I had these annoying tags over my pictures. Who knew it was as easy to turn off just by hitting the letter “i”. You saved me today!!! Thanks for posting something so random!

  17. Cyndi 24 July, 2015 at 18:47 Reply

    This is a great tip, but it doesn’t seem to work in the Print module.

    It says:
    Page 1 of 1
    Paper: Custom Size
    Printer: Epson….

  18. Iza 17 June, 2013 at 21:12 Reply

    Thanks, Matt, for sharing this tip. It is such a simple thing, and yet one of those you don’t realize how useful it is until somebody tells you about it!

  19. Jenny Rhea Eisenhauer 15 June, 2013 at 12:41 Reply

    Lightroom question: When I import my photos it “CHANGES” them. They go from being spot on exposure and color(thanks to using a light meter and White Balancing) to being overexposed by at least a stop. No presets are used, and I have “heard” it may be the “conversion” to a JPEG for viewing purposes. I can’t wrap my head around this idea though, as how are we supposed to use a dummy version of a JPEG that isn’t “true” to color correct, correct exposure, etc in lightroom if it isn’t what it really look like. GRRR… I would love to have an answer to this issue if you have one! Makes me want to go back to shooting in JPEG as I knew I was spot on and I didn’t have to have any “help” from Lightroom.

    Jenny Rhea Eisenhauer

  20. John Richardson 14 June, 2013 at 23:06 Reply

    Matt: I was wondering, since I have upgraded to LR5 and converted my catalogs to 5, should I go ahead and delete LR4’s old catalog? It seems like it is destined to stay in my drive and never be used again. I mean, is there any reason to keep it that you can think of?

  21. juice 11 June, 2013 at 22:44 Reply

    While I sometimes turn the overlay off, I love the ease of access to the information it provides (once you’ve customised them).

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