Lightroom Crop Tool & Other Tips

Crop tool. We always want to avoid it but sometimes we just can’t. Our photo might be a little off kilter or the client wants the photo cropped. Other times Mom wants it to fit in a regular 8×10 frame, ruining our perfect 2×3 in-camera composition. I show you how each part of the crop tool works plus a bonus keyboard shortcut to switch from vertical and horizontal.

Keyboard shortcuts have been around in Photoshop forever. Now Lightroom has its own set of them…if you want to cut down the time you spend editing your photos you should learn them. The best way to learn is one at a time. Refer to the shortcut list (Ctrl + /) and keep using each one until it becomes habit.

The flag status (X for reject) allows me to sort through photos much more quickly. Until recently I didn’t know how to turn off the rejected flag with the keyboard. There are two ways, either with the backtick ` (top right of your keyboard, under the tilde ~) or Ctrl + Up / Ctrl + Down.