P: Keyboard Shortcuts for Basic Tone and Color Adjustments

John: OK, if you use auto sync 99% of the time, you are not individually adjusting tens of thousands of photos, not even close. I use auto sync about 10% of the time, so I am individually adjusting the remaining ~90% which add up to tens of thousands of photos every year. Most of the adjustments are very minor, but once I have the ability to make them, it's hard to look at a photo and not tweak it just a little and make it visibly better. Keyboard shortcuts would be an enormous productivity boost.

Lee: as for "exact clickpoint", that's just a matter of definition. OK, it's not exact as in EXACT, but your mouse still has to end up pretty close to a certain point to activate the desired control. Yes, that's very quick, but whether it's quick enough depends on how many photos you are adjusting. When I adjust a small number of photos, using the mouse is perfectly easy and quick. When I have to adjust 1,200 photos in a day or two, keyboard shortcuts would speed things enormously. I know this from using a programmed X-Keys with Lightroom. When the thing works, it's a wonderful time saver. But I've had two of them break, so I feel they are pretty unreliable (and they cost ~$200 each).

As for "most of the time is spent deciding what I want to do to an image" -- that's perfectly fine. If I were working that way, then the time spent to mouse click would indeed be trivial. But my decision process is almost instant for most photos. It has to be in order to complete the volume of work. The clicking takes me more time than the deciding.

Honestly guys, if you feel keyboard shortcuts would not help you personally, do you really need to speak out *against* them? How would they hurt your workflow? They would help mine immensely. Please appreciate that people have different needs for a product as rich and useful as Lightroom.

"Really? Do you individually adjust the tens of thousands of pictures? It would improve my efficiency greatly. Searching for an exact clickpoint for the mouse before every click adds so much effort when multiplied by tens of thousands of photos."

Yes, really. First of all, most of the time is spent deciding what I want to do to an image, not actually doing it. Second, I can grab a slider and adjust it quickly. Third, I can hover and use the arrow and shift-arrow keys very quickly. Fourth, I can use Quick Develop which is very fast as well for the basics. There's never a need to find an "exact clickpoint".

Yes, seriously. I use auto sync 99% of the time and also see keyboard shortcuts as v important for productivity, but I am perfectly content activating those basic panel sliders with the cursor and either dragging the slider or using the + / - adjustments. I didn't actually know about the . / , and expect I will have forgotten them in a couple of days.

Really? Do you individually adjust the tens of thousands of pictures? It would improve my efficiency greatly. Searching for an exact clickpoint for the mouse before every click adds so much effort when multiplied by tens of thousands of photos.

I've never once felt the need for keyboard shortcuts for the basic tone and colour adjustments, despite the tens of thousands of pictures I process.

However it's done, I want to be able to access the basic tone and color adjustments instantly via the keyboard. Cycling through them with , and . keys to select an item is needlessly tedious when going through hundreds or thousands of photos.

I think the real solution isn't adding shortcuts to individual features, but making shortcuts customisable.

Even some obscure multiple-key shortcuts would satisfy many volume users, as those shortcuts could then be assigned to shortcut keypads. Gets my vote for sure.

Since almost all the keys are already doing something, adding all this would require giving up those other things.

You can use the , and . keys to select an item and the +/- keys to adjust already.