Skip to main content
A
Anonymous
May 5, 2011
Open for Voting

P: Allow for keyboard shortcut customization

  • May 5, 2011
  • 274 replies
  • 16015 views

Customizable keyboard shortcuts in Lightroom would be great. I just find it so confusing that crop and brush tools and things like that have such odd keyboard shortcuts in Lightroom. I understand that changing that all now would be awful for many existing users, but being able to override them like I can in Photoshop would be helpful. Doesn't anyone else out there find they use to wrong keyboard shortcuts in the wrong program?

    274 replies

    Show previous replies
    T
    tjeerd paulj59535807
    Participating Frequently
    March 31, 2018
    True, that's why i mentioned keyboard maestro or better touch tool.These tools can map anything to anything on a application or global level.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    March 31, 2018
    And, you can’t assign one-key shortcuts.
    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    March 31, 2018
    "You can remap anything in Lightroom in OSX keyboard"

    Macos Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts can only assign shortcuts to menu commands, and unfortunately, there are a number of LR keyboard shortcuts that don't correspond to menu commands.
    T
    tjeerd paulj59535807
    Participating Frequently
    March 30, 2018
    You can remap anything in Lightroom in OSX keyboard or using keyboard maestro, Better Touch Tool, Karabiner.
    You can always create macro's to compensate for the failures of companies like Adobe.

    This thread is not about custom keyboard shortcuts alone. It's about the current state of Adobe in terms of software development. 

    My current solution is the following:

    You uninstall Lightroom. 
    Cancel your subscription.
    Buy or Subscribe to Capture One.

    This software actually uses 2018 computer code and hardware and the color tools are amazing.
    You can even customize your food in it...
    Capture One will develop this software because it's all they have. ( and care about it and their customers )

    Adobe will never listen anyway, because they simply don't care. 
    Their stockholders and marketing department have their asses up in the cloud. 
    I will stop wasting my time and money on this company. Good bye.
    C
    chrisoaten
    Inspiring
    March 30, 2018
    Apple can do it (Aperture’s keyboard customization is excellent) but Adobe can’t/won’t. It’s pathetic.
    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    March 29, 2018

    I agree with Martin Hopf's observations about keyboard shortcuts for non-English languages.

    Adobe invests very little in this. For starters, there appears to be a complete lack of quality assurance, with elementary editing mistakes in other languages' TranslatedStrings.txt frequently released. For example, a quick search reveals this partial list:

    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/x-keyboard-shortcut-is-assigned-to-two-functi...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/x-keyboard-shortcut-is-assigned-to-two-functi...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr-2015cc-8-short-cut-x-to-reject-an-image-in...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-shift-x-no-longer-does-reject-and-n...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-classic-cc-keyboard-shortcuts-for-r...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr-classic-on-windows-the-shortcut-panel-in-d...
    https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/incrementtargetadjustmentvalue-does-not-work-...

    These bugs, though they're trivial mistakes, typically take two or more release cycles to fix. Most recently, it took five months to fix the broken rotate-photo shortcuts. And even then, Adobe neglected to fix the list of Library shortcuts in the Help menu, even though that was explicitly called out in the bug report.

    Ways that Adobe could improve the situation:

    1. Invest more in product management, documentation, and quality assurance of non-English shortcuts. This requires engaging experts knowledgeable in the supported languages and countries and their corresponding keyboards and then building an engineering process for maintaining and testing shortcut definitions, which Adobe apparently lacks. (TranslatedStrings alone is hardly sufficient.)

    This alone won't address the needs of languages used in multiple countries with differing keyboard layouts.

    Over the years, Adobe has not been able to implement solution 1 at an acceptable level of quality. It would be significantly cheaper for them in the longer run to simply improve the infrastructure for customizing keyboard shortcuts and rely on the user community for maintaining a diverse set of shortcut definitions for each language/keyboard combination. 

    A few simple, incremental, inexpensive steps would go a long way:

    2. Ensure that every keyboard shortcut is defined in a configuration file that can be edited by users, e.g. TranslatedStrings.

    3. Clean up the internal organizational mess in TranslatedStrings to make it easier to maintain. It currently looks and smells like a teenager's bedroom.

    4. Allow keyboard shortcuts to be defined in a config file separate from TranslatedStrings. This would make it easier to maintain and allow the community to more easily share shortcut definitions and avoid the accidental overwriting of the config files by LR updates. It would also allow the automatic generation of authoritative, complete documentation of shortcuts, which Adobe currently doesn't provide.

    5. Allow plugin keyboard shortcuts to be defined in the config file.

    6. Provide a GUI user interface for editing the config file.  Or just rely on plugin developers to provide such a utility (e.g. the next release of KB Tamer).  

    This combination of a clean config infrastructure, community-maintained keyboard layouts, and plugin-provided GUI would be a huge improvement over the current situation and would kill two birds with one stone: let users customize their shortcuts and provide much better support for non-English languages.  Faster, cheaper, better.

    S
    stylish_mindset15A7
    Participating Frequently
    March 29, 2018
    Dear Victoria
    Don't get me wrong. I am not just a shouter. I tried it all. File it as a bug, write them, contribute to Beta testing filing this... for years now. Never ever got any response from them. Te only reaction once was some guy sending me a link to the adobe help pages where they have the (also buggy!) list of german shotcuts. Of course I answered the support guy, again explaining exactly what I mean, showed every step to reproduce. No reply, case closed and "solved". Believe me, I tried it all. Can't remember how many times.

    I would even take all the work and would clean this up for Adobe if only they would let me contribute.

    And Yes, of course, I know all about the shortcuts. Even have bought KB Tamer, which also has many drawbacks. I really almost scientifically dismantled TranslatedStrings.txt and KB Tamer. Even if you directly parse, sort and edit the .txt you will not succeed. Many of this settings you can edit there will also not show the intended effect.

    So my simple wish was :
    1) Make Adobe aware that there are many countries out there which although they shre the same localisation language they have different KB layouts, so that not even basic keys like #, /, ... can be accesssed wit hone stroke. Let me tell you my case: I use a swiss german keyboard which differs from german-german keyboards. So the german language indended keys just are not there. The same problem seems to exist with french and spanish and swedish localisations. They also seem to be used by users in different countries which have the same language but not same  keyboards.
    2) Make them take care of their official shortcuts lists on the help site which (at least in german) not even correspond to what I see when I look into the TranslatedStrings. It is indeed very messy done. Even the structure of the content in Translated Strings is unbelievably inconsistent and messy. So just a matter of Software quality in my eyes.

    KB Tamer also cannot solve this mess, uses admin rights and many a time an Adobe update just wiped my thouroughly and carefully built custom file silently from the disk replacing it again with the messy stock files. That's why this is als no solution.

    I hop you understand now why I finally just somehow tried to be heared. At least I could now get your attention, maybe Adobe also finally will her us. It's not my private convenience problem its a real showstopper for hundreds of thousand users out there.

    So far so good. You don't have to fear that I as a long term subscriber of you will stain your reputation when you write comments on me. I am just so sick and tired that I needed to get somewhat loud eventually.

    Thanks for your attention ann have a nice easter holiday time! 
    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 29, 2018
    > Trouble is they are simply not working for many localisations

    IMHO, that's the argument that needs shouting about, as it holds a lot more weight than simply "I want to be able to pick my own shortcuts".  For what it's worth, this may help with your localization shortcuts in the meantime How do I change or create keyboard shortcuts?
    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
    S
    stylish_mindset15A7
    Participating Frequently
    March 29, 2018
    Victoria, thanks for yor comment. I woldn't even complain if there were just default shortcuts which at least would work. Trouble is they are simply not working for many localisations. Not even the most basic ones like resizing the brush are useable in some localisations. My complaint is far away from a convenience wish. Its about basic features simply not working excluding whole countries from a normal and efficient workflow. Yes I know Switzerland is small... but they keep us punishing with much higher fees compared to e.g. Germany (same language but different kb lsyouts). And guess what is their explanation for that price premium? Exactly the explanation that localisation for small countries is costly... Still I feel being a surcharged customer of 2nd class.
    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 29, 2018
    Bear in mind they have stats from when they did it for Photoshop - both on how long it took to do, and how many people actually bother to use it. That will no doubt influence their priority decisions.
    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
    Show more replies
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices