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IsaacDolanVideography
Participant
March 19, 2025
Answered

Cannot find Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts to Change

  • March 19, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1731 views

Hello there,

 

I'm working in Lightroom 8.2 in Windows 11.

 

I primarily work in Premiere since I mostly do video work. In Premiere, you can go to edit -> keyboard shortcuts, and you can view and customize keyboard shortcuts and commnads.

 

I am getting into some real estate photography, and I am trying to use Lightroom to combine the bracketed photos and edit them, but going from Premiere to Lightroom, it seems like none of the basic keyboard shortcuts are the same. Everything I am finding "help" for is for Lightroom Classic which I am not using. I'm using just the regular, ole Lightroom V8.2. According to Google, you can change the shortcuts in regular Lightroom, but not Lightroom classic, but I cannot find where it is to save my life to actually change it. I can't even find anywhere in Lightroom where it would tell me what the shortcuts are. Like I mentioned, in Premiere, it's right there in edit -> keyboard shortcuts.

 

All I am trying to do is speed up my workflow with simple keyboard shortcuts like going back to a normal cursor from a brush, zooming in and out, etc., but Lightroom seems to not be anywhere near as intuitive as Premiere is. I can't even find a shortcut list online that actually matches what the actual shortcuts are on my Lightroom. For example, everything keeps telling me "z" is zoom, but "z" flags the photo as a "pick." This is driving me insane...

 

Any direction or help would be greatly apprecaited, as this is becoming very frustrating. Thank you!

Correct answer Conrad_C
quote

All I am trying to do is speed up my workflow with simple keyboard shortcuts like going back to a normal cursor from a brush, zooming in and out, etc., but Lightroom seems to not be anywhere near as intuitive as Premiere is. I can't even find a shortcut list online that actually matches what the actual shortcuts are on my Lightroom. For example, everything keeps telling me "z" is zoom, but "z" flags the photo as a "pick." This is driving me insane...

By @IsaacDolanVideography

 

There are several things going on here…

 

Lightroom has gone through some confusing changes in the last few years. It started when Adobe rewrote Lightroom from the ground up as a cloud-based service that syncs easily among client apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web browsers. They now call this “Lightroom.” The Lightroom they originally released in 2007, which remains locally oriented and with only limited cloud support, was re-branded as Lightroom Classic.

 

So the Z key shortcuts you saw are all correct…but not correct for all forms of Lightroom. 

 

Z means “Zoom in/out” what is now called Lightroom Classic, but any shortcut list you saw that was posted before the big transition still calls that app Lightroom. 

 

Z for Pick is for what is now called Lightroom.

 

Unfortunately, your experience with editing Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts has set your expectations too high for other Adobe apps. The keyboard shortcut editor in the Adobe video/audio apps is the best and most powerful shortcut editor Adobe has. It's fantastic, I love how it’s graphically oriented with great visual feedback for what key has what shortcut. It is so great that some of us who have used the video apps have been asking Adobe for a long time to please put it into the graphic design and photo apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom Classic). That still has not happened. Adobe sort of made a tiny amount of progress there when they recently upgraded the Adobe Bridge keyboard shortcut editor by bringing in the good one from the video apps. But we’re still waiting for the 1990s-era shortcut editor in the more major non-video apps to be upgraded.

 

So, in short, this is what you’re dealing with:

  • Premiere Pro, After Effects, and now Adobe Bridge have the best, most powerful, and most intuitive keyboard shortcut editor Adobe has. 
  • Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign have an outdated, frustrating keyboard shortcut editor. 
  • Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Camera Raw, and other Adobe apps still have no keyboard shortcut editor at all. 

 

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 19, 2025
quote

All I am trying to do is speed up my workflow with simple keyboard shortcuts like going back to a normal cursor from a brush, zooming in and out, etc., but Lightroom seems to not be anywhere near as intuitive as Premiere is. I can't even find a shortcut list online that actually matches what the actual shortcuts are on my Lightroom. For example, everything keeps telling me "z" is zoom, but "z" flags the photo as a "pick." This is driving me insane...

By @IsaacDolanVideography

 

There are several things going on here…

 

Lightroom has gone through some confusing changes in the last few years. It started when Adobe rewrote Lightroom from the ground up as a cloud-based service that syncs easily among client apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web browsers. They now call this “Lightroom.” The Lightroom they originally released in 2007, which remains locally oriented and with only limited cloud support, was re-branded as Lightroom Classic.

 

So the Z key shortcuts you saw are all correct…but not correct for all forms of Lightroom. 

 

Z means “Zoom in/out” what is now called Lightroom Classic, but any shortcut list you saw that was posted before the big transition still calls that app Lightroom. 

 

Z for Pick is for what is now called Lightroom.

 

Unfortunately, your experience with editing Premiere Pro keyboard shortcuts has set your expectations too high for other Adobe apps. The keyboard shortcut editor in the Adobe video/audio apps is the best and most powerful shortcut editor Adobe has. It's fantastic, I love how it’s graphically oriented with great visual feedback for what key has what shortcut. It is so great that some of us who have used the video apps have been asking Adobe for a long time to please put it into the graphic design and photo apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom Classic). That still has not happened. Adobe sort of made a tiny amount of progress there when they recently upgraded the Adobe Bridge keyboard shortcut editor by bringing in the good one from the video apps. But we’re still waiting for the 1990s-era shortcut editor in the more major non-video apps to be upgraded.

 

So, in short, this is what you’re dealing with:

  • Premiere Pro, After Effects, and now Adobe Bridge have the best, most powerful, and most intuitive keyboard shortcut editor Adobe has. 
  • Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign have an outdated, frustrating keyboard shortcut editor. 
  • Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Camera Raw, and other Adobe apps still have no keyboard shortcut editor at all. 

 

    I
    IsaacDolanVideographyAuthor
    Participant
    March 21, 2025

    Ah ha, thank you so much! This makes so much more sense. See, even Google's AI couldn't find me the correct answers. Sometimes you just need a good ole fashioned human who knows what they are talking about!

     

    Hopefully Adobe will integrate the keyboard shortcut editor from Premiere, After Effects, and Bridge into all of their apps, because my workflow is able to be so much quicker in premiere because of the shortcut editor.

     

    I appreciate the help!

    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 19, 2025

    Here is a link (courtesy of Lightroom Queen) where you will find Keyboard shortcuts for "Lightroom"  (aka Lightroom-Desktop v8.2 'Cloud based'

    )

    https://www.lightroomqueen.com/keyboard-shortcuts/

    TBMK KB shortcuts are 'hard-wired' in Lightroom. I don't know if any apps exist to modify shortcuts.

     

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
      DavinciWhite
      DavinciWhite
      Participating Frequently
      March 23, 2026

      Great, 
      I appreciate it.

      How hard can it be just to implement the shortcuts in the program itself?  


      It’s really painful to search for a single action shortcut when you use a non-english keyboard. (well, not anymore thanks to the Lightroom Queen… but… why it’s not in the program itself is a big cursed question)
       

      Conrad_C
      Community Expert
      Conrad_CCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 24, 2026

      How hard can it be just to implement the shortcuts in the program itself?  

       

      Probably not hard, of course. But it is possible the real problem is not doing it, it’s scheduling to do it: If you look at the list of feature requests that users have submitted for Lightroom, there are over 1300. That isn’t including things that Adobe privately has on their own list. The question is, what’s the priority of adding customizable keyboard shortcuts? 

       

      It looks like there is an existing request for customizable keyboard shortcuts. A user submitted it 8 years ago, and it has 22 votes. There are a number of user requests with many more votes, such as a left-handed UI option (71 votes) and being able to watermark images shared online (85 votes). Ability to change background color (126 votes) is marked by Adobe as “In Development.” The requests Add Smart Albums (107 votes) and Add Color Labels (142  votes) are both marked “Released”…so Adobe has done those. That’s just one indicator of how close some features are to actually being done. However user votes aren’t the only criterion Adobe uses, they can be influenced by other factors such as what the competition has and what marketing wants. 

       

      I am a big fan of customizable keyboard shortcuts, so I’ve watched Adobe take about 20 years to add customizable keyboard shortcuts to Adobe Bridge, and watched them continue to not add customizable keyboard shortcuts in the entire 19-year history of Lightroom Classic. I think the keyboard shortcut editor in the Adobe pro video applications is fantastic and the best one they have, but I also continue to wait for Adobe to upgrade their clumsy 1990s-era keyboard shortcut editors that are in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign and bring them up to the standard of the shortcut editor in their video applications. (At least when Bridge added a shortcut editor, they used the good one from the video apps.)

       

      Lightroom is a special case in that it’s part of a cross-platform “ecosystem” with mobile versions that they like to keep as similar as possible. If Adobe decides to consider customizable shortcuts for Lightroom, they will probably not develop that feature for desktop Lightroom in isolation…they will also stop and take time to think about the best way to make that feature parallel across phones, tablets, tablets used with keyboards, and the web app version of Lightroom. It won’t be some slam-dunk 5 minutes of vibe coding for Mac/Windows.

       

      So that’s your big picture. It might be technically easy to add a shortcut editor to Lightroom, but it is not easy to predict when that will rise to the top of the priority list, and whether Lightroom gets the older or improved Adobe shortcut editor, or a new one simplified to be consistent across desktop, mobile, and browser app.

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