P: Ability to assign a second monitor with more than 3 monitors

[Agesaki2]

If you have more than 3 monitors, there is no way to assign the "second monitor" in Lightroom 3.5.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Under Windows, LR will use the monitor defined as display number 2, so you can set the monitor you want to use as the "second monitor" in the Display settings of the control panel.

Marc

[Agesaki2]

Thanks Marc. You may be right, but I cannot find a way to change the assigned monitor number. #1 is my notebook internal monitor. #2 is my primary external monitor, and #3 is my secondary external monitor. I want to use #2 and #3, but LR is using #2 and #1. They also have all different resolutions, and I cannot physically move them around. Any ideas?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You can always move the primary LR window over to another monitor, but I'm not sure that will solve your problem. Or you could disable the notebook's internal monitor so one of the external monitors becomes #1. Or perhaps you can find a video driver which will allow you to rearrange the monitors.

[Agesaki2]

(I changed the nickname.) Thanks again. Disabling the laptop's monitor works as a workaround, but LR should be able to choose a monitor more flexibly. I hope Adobe people could look into this.

[J453]

I talked with the engineer that implemented this feature. He says it should be possible to place the secondary display on any monitor by pushing it around with the app window. If you drag the app window onto the monitor containing the secondary display, it will jump to the next monitor over. So you should be able to chase it onto whichever monitor you want by dragging the app around.

[Agesaki2]

Thanks, Jeffrey! It's nice to know that you guys are reading. I know that if I use a window on the second monitor, I can resize & move it around. So it's almost OK. But it sometimes shrinks back when I exceed the the maximum window size, leave LR, and come back. I wrote a short AutoIt script to fix this. I wish I could use it on a clean full screen. Maybe it's also nice to add support for 3 or more screens.

[J453]

I think I'm following you now. Your main beef is that because you use a laptop, the screen numbers change when you unhook and rehook your external monitors. It's not so much that you can't get the second monitor window on the right monitor, you can't get it to be permanently remembered when the monitors are removed and added. Is that correct?

[J453]

The engineer suggested also "The behavior I described only happens
when you run the secondary display in full screen mode. This person
should try that instead of using the windowed mode and positioning it by
hand."

Have you tried having the 2nd monitor window set to Full Screen mode? If might make this work the way you expect.

[Agesaki2]

Hi Jeffrey, now I correctly understand what you mean by "pushing around." If I maximize the main window in a monitor, the secondary display is pushed out to another. But in my case, it always moves to the monitor that I don't want to use. The direction of this cycle in one way, so this situation is logically possible.

The number of monitors in my configuration is always three.
It's a VAIO Z, and it can handle up to four monitors, in fact.

[J453]

Here's more from the eng:

"They referred to resizing and moving it, which is why I think they don't understand that you can push the fullscreen version of the secondary window onto any monitor you want it on by dragging the main app window.

We don't try to remember which monitor they last had it on, we always just pick the monitor to the right of the app monitor. So they'll have to push it onto their third monitor every time they turn on the view."

Sound like you figured out what he suggests in the first paragraph.

So, if you push the maximized main window right twice, you can't get it to the 3rd screen?

[Agesaki2]

For some reason, the second display doesn't show up to right of the main. It shows on the internal display, and this is not what I want.

Here are how the display numbers appear.

[2 (primary)] [3 (should be secondary)] [1 (internal)]

I want to use 2 & 3 (and theoretically I should be able to), but 2 & 1 is used instead.

This may due to that my configuration includes an internal display (which may have some kind of priority).

In any case, it would be nice if a third (or more) display is recognized as "third display" in LR.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

In my experience it doesn't matter if the no. 1 screen is laptop's internal or other screen.
I have similiar problem with my configuration: two identical 1600x1200 Samsung 20" displays and 1920x1080 Panasonic 32" TV (connected to two NVidia graphic cards). In this case Lightroom's 2nd display always jumps to TV screen (when in fullscreen mode) when main app is on Windows' main display. This is independant of screen numbering in Windows settings (which depends on physical connection of the screens). This is very annoying :/
The only solution for me so far is dragging the main app to the no. 2 monitor - then Lightroom's 2nd screen appears on no. 1 screen (main). Problem in this case is accessing the Windows' taskbar (as I use auto-hide function) - the taskbar doesn't slide out when I move the mouse to the bottom of the screen with full-screen-mode Lightroom's 2nd window. Very irritating 😕

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

LightRoom 3.4.1, under Win7 Pro SP1.
I have 3 monitors: Main (1) is central, number 2 on its right, and number 3 on its left. I cannot manage to have LightRoom display the secondary screen in full screen mode on the right most monitor. Montior cables were switch, different monitor numbering tried to no avail.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I need to change the change/select the Display on which the second Window of Lightroom appears in my setup with three Monitors. There ́s no option in Lightroom for that.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

When working on multiple screens,
it should be possible to assign the second screen view
to a specific display.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Wow. Seems, this is a known problem.
Chasing around is not a solution.

Please let us choose on wchich screen #Number it will be displayed.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Still chasing around which doesn't make a bit of sense. Adobe, please resolve this!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

SOLUTION for NOW... (Im USING 3 Displays)
I had the same problem... I wanted to use the middle monitor as my main screen and LR secondary to open on my right monitor due to my workstation setup... I searched the internet entirely with no luck...

Solution:
To remedy this I just disabled my secondary screen from full screen mode so i could manually move it.
LR > Window (Menu) > Secondary Display > Full Screen (Shift+F11) then just move it where you want and stretch it to the max size. If you switch to full screen for the secondary display it will automatically go back to the left display. You can still use the main window in full screen with this modification.

Hope this helps
CHEERS

[andre_seattle]

Does LR remember where the secondary was placed last when you re-launch it? I'm having the same issue with LR 5.6. It's pretty amazing that this problem was reported over 3 years (and two full releases) ago by several users and nothing has been done to address a proper fix.

Hello, Adobe...anybody paying attention????

[PunaJussi]

Not fixed. Pretty ridiculous. Evey time you go to another program you have to move the secondary window back to another screen and resize it when you return to lightroom. It desent just stay where you leave it. It's not too sleek looking either. This is just so stupid. If the second window just acted like a regular window the problem would not be there at all. HOW HARD IS IT TO MAKE BASIC THINGS WORK, ADOBE?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Just adding my voice to the list of users wanting the 2nd monitor to be configurable amongst the available screens - using three currently, and it always goes to the wrong one 😞

dragging it to the screen I want works, poorly, mainly due to reverting when LR loses focus. Adobe, I'd love to see this sorted!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Three years of complaining and still no fix?!?!?
OS X 10.8.4, Lightroom 5.6: as soon as I switch the secondary to full screen, it jumps to the wrong monitor. The only way to get it full screen on the right monitor is to physically disconnect the one it apparently has fallen in love with.
I suspect that it is OS X that assigns an order to the monitors, but that order is NOT based on the physical connection of the displays (even swapping connections did not help).

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Also have three monitors, also have the same problem. Surely there is a way to support triple-monitors?!?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I guess I'll just add my voice here, this problem is very annoying. A maximize button on the windows would presumably be an easy solution. Me too!

[andre_seattle]

So it's been at least 3 years and at least 2 major releases of LR and this problem continues exactly as it was first reported. Aside from a ham-handed workaround suggestion, no communication from Adobe has happened since. I don't know what other conclusion to draw than Adobe just doesn't care. User forum administrators helpfully merge similar discussion topics to this thread but it's cricket city for actual feedback from Adobe to the Proles. And I'm told this is the [preferred] method of drawing Adobe's attention to issues with their software. Yeah, right. User forums? More like "Users? Ignore 'em".

There are other RAW editing/database applications out there. While their feature sets may be less robust than LR, I'm willing to bet their developers actually listen to, and fix, bug reports from users instead of cavalierly ignoring them for years. The Great Adobe seems to have lost sight of this bit of conventional wisdom.