Photo How To

Many of us spend hours meticulously editing a set of photos, all the while wishing we were back out in the field with a camera doing what we love most. Today's tutorial with instructor Rob Dryburgh will grant that wish by demonstrating "eight must-know shortcuts that will boost your workflow and make post processing a breeze!"

Dryburgh is an accomplished pro based in beautiful Newfoundland, Canada with the goal of helping others "unlock their passion for photography" with straightforward shooting and editing tips that anyone cam master in minutes. The helpful hacks in this seven-minute episode span the gamut from automatic adjustments to helpful before-and-after views.

These timesaving techniques are all about more efficient ways to use common Lightroom tools and a few keyboard shortcuts that you'll want to start using today. He begins with a trick for adjusting sliders, explaining that "if you hold the Shift button and double-click on a slider Lightroom will automatically adjust the slider to what it thinks is the proper adjustment."

Next on the list is a simple way to automatically invoke the Crop tool by tapping the "R" key. And once the Crop guides appear you can hit the letter "O" to cycle through various cropping options from the Rule of Thirds, Golden Ratio and other helpful aids for switching up composition.

Dryburgh moves on to a discussion of Lightroom's oft-ignored Solo mode, describing what it does and the most-efficient method for using it to accelerate your workflow by collapsing unnecessary panel to simplify the workspace and keep you on track. There's another cool trick that enables you to adjust exposure by clicking on the histogram and dragging left or right.

The foregoing shortcuts are just half of those you'll learn by watching this lesson until the end. Other tricks include an easy method for syncing multiples photos, dimming the interface by hitting the letter "L" and accomplishing fine slider adjustments. The lesson concludes with a quick tip for comparing before/after images in a split screen by simply tapping the letter "Y" on your keyboard.

Dryburgh's popular YouTube channel offers a variety of how-to videos that will help level up your post-processing skills.

And on a related note, don't miss the earlier tutorial we posted with another pros's advice for avoiding seven image-killing mistakes that may disrupt your Lightroom workflow and compromise the quality of your photographs.