Copyright Scott Bourne 2010 – All Rights Reserved

It’s normal to spend a lot of time in Lightroom’s Grid view, so it pays to learn a few ways to make your time there more efficient. Here are ten ways to get you working at the top of your game:

1. Press G from anywhere in Lightroom to jump to Grid view.

2. While in Grid view, you can quickly zoom in on a selected photo by holding the Z key. Keeping the Z key pressed allows you to click and drag around the zoomed photo as needed. Release the Z key to return to Grid view.

3. Increase the size of thumbnails with the + key and decrease with the – key.

4. Press J to cycle through the Grid cell styles. Press Ctrl/Cmd+J to open the dialog box to configure the cell style options.

5. If you want to arrange thumbnails manually into a new sort order you will need to work within either a collection or a folder (with no subfolders). Group photos located across multiple folders into a collection. From there, be sure to grab the center of the photo (not the border) and drag/drop the thumbnails to rearrange.

6. When working within a folder, you can group multiple photos into stacks to decrease clutter. Select the photos you want to stack and go to Photo > Stacking > Group into Stack (or press Ctrl/CMD+G). If the menu option is grayed out you aren’t working within a folder.

7. If you do not wish to see the contents of subfolders showing inside parent folders go to the Library menu and uncheck Include photos from subfolders.

8. To make the application of flags, ratings and color labels go faster you can enable Auto Advance under the Photo menu. When enabled, Lightroom will automatically advance focus to the next thumbnail after a rating, flag or color label is applied.

9. To devote maximum screen real estate to thumbnails only … press F until you reach Full Screen mode, press Tab+Shift to hide all panels, press T to hide the Toolbar and press the \ (backslash) key to hide the Library Filter bar. Press those same keystrokes again to return panels and toolbars to their original visibility.

10. Remember, when in Grid view everything you do is applied to all selected photos (for better or worse), so use it to your advantage and don’t forget you can always undo with Ctrl/Cmd+Z.

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