New Post on PhotoFocus and a Speed Tip

The name of the post is Avoiding Problems + Improving Performance = Happy Lightroom User and with it I tried to cover the basic tips that account for nearly a third of the problems people ask me about. It may seem simple, but you’d be surprised how often it comes up and how easy it can be to overlook. Once you finish that post be sure to check out the tutorial on boosting Lightroom performance I updated for Lightroom 3 Beta.

Here’s one more performance boosting tip for both Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3 Beta. To speed up the process of applying flags and ratings to photos in the Library module you can turn on the Caps Lock key to automatically move to the next photo after applying a rating or flag. If you hold the Shift key it works the same way. Those are both good tips, but I always forget the Caps Lock is on and start typing, so I prefer another option. Look under the Photo menu and check Auto Advance.

With Auto Advance enabled you can just focus on applying flags, ratings and color labels and Lightroom will automatically advance you to the next photo after any one of those is applied. If you want to apply both a flag and a rating before auto advancing hold the Shift key (or enable Caps Lock) and Lightroom will auto advance after the second item is applied. This combo really helps you cruise through the process.