Tip – Grid Thumbnail Sizes

By mattk on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 6:29 am | Lightroom Tips.

Here's a quick and dirty tip to close out the week with. Sadly, after over 2 years of using Lightroom, I just found this one this past week. Anyway, here it is. You know when you're in the Library module and you're looking through your photos using the Grid view (just press G). Well, if you want to increase or decrease the size of the thumbnail you see just press the + or - keys (plus or minus). That's it. Nothing earth shattering but trust me, you'll use it more then you think. Enjoy folks and if you're in the US ,have a great/safe Memorial Day weekend.

27 Comments For Tip – Grid Thumbnail Sizes

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  1. Antonio Biggio says:

    Thank Matt,
    but in my mac it’s possible just decrease (-) and not increase (+). I don’t understanding why.

  2. Thomas says:

    Thank´s Matt. But it doens´t work on the PC. Are you sure its working on both plattforms ?

    Greetings,
    Thomas

  3. chi says:

    it works on my pc, windows xp.

    i’m adding this tip into my long term memory.

  4. Marty Cohen says:

    Works perfectly on my Mac. Unbelievable we had no clue about that one. I can see using it quite a bit. Really convenient….
    Thanks Matt……

    Here’s another quick Lightroom tip.
    Have you ever wanted to have no image selected in the Library Module? If you do, just hit the “/” key and no image will be selected and the Navigator window will become blank. Where this is useful is when you are importing Presets in the Develop Module. If you happen to have an image selected when you import Develop Module Presets, the last one imported will be applied to the image that happens to be selected at the time (which, you most likely won’t want to have happen). So, before importing these presets, go to the Library Module (press “G” key), then hit the “/” key to deselect the currently selected image. Next, go back to the Develop Module (press “D” key) and do your Preset importing.

    Marty

  5. Kathleen D says:

    Wondering if you could explain the difference between sharpening during develop mode and sharpening in print mode. I thought if you sharpened in the develop mode (which I do), then you ignored the print sharpening. But heard someone mention the need to do both. I have never picked that up before and would like more clarification.

    Thanks.

  6. Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteaţă says:

    > Have you ever wanted to have no image selected in the Library Module? If you do, just hit the “/” key and no image will be selected and the Navigator window will become blank.

    Not quite true. Slash (/) deselects the primary select only. If you have multiple images selected, the others will stay selected.

    Ctrl/Cmd+D, however, does indeed deselect all images.

  7. Marty Cohen says:

    >Ctrl/Cmd+D, however, does indeed deselect all images.

    Good point Dorin. Thanks for pointing that out.

    Marty

  8. Jim Stamates says:

    Pressing the command key then + will jump to loop view then command – will get you back to grid. Yes, you can use the E and G keys to do the same thing but if you are already using the + – keys to enlarge the thumbnails this is a quick way to see a large version and go back.

    Jim

  9. Tim says:

    On my PC (Vista), it’s actually the ‘minus’ key and the ‘equals’ key. The keypad plus doesn’t work, but the minus does.

    What an odd choice. I guess if you don’t have a keypad it saves you from having to press the shift key to increase size.

    -Tim

  10. Carl B. says:

    Some of the hotkeys in Lightroom do not work if you have a non US keyboard, at least this is the case on XPsp3. [+] happens to be a remapped in my native keyboard layout (Norwegian) and does not work. [-] works. I have US English keyboard mappings installed too and switching to that brings [+] back to life. The numeric keypad [+] does not work at all.

    I sure wish we could remap commands like we can in PS

    - Carl

  11. russcam says:

    + and – for grid thumb change only seems to work when grid is on main application screen, not secondary screen. :(

  12. Lars says:

    For those of you where ‘+’ isn’t working – try ‘#’ instead. It works for me (Windows, german LR2).

    And for showing shortcuts for the current module, try Ctrl-< .

  13. Mike Wong says:

    Thanks for the tip Matt. I had no idea. All this time with my wife looking over my shoulder asking me to make the pictures bigger with me grabbing that slider back and forth….

  14. Michelle says:

    Thanks for this Matt, I actually discovered this on Wednesday when I couldn’t remember how to change the thumbnail size. Works great on my Mac!

  15. Kathy says:

    I have an question unrelated to this topic, but didn’t know a better way to ask. In the Lightroom Print module, when you are using a template that allows more than one image, is there a way to specify how the images are placed? From what I can see, they are placed in the grid by the way they are displayed in the filmstrip grid. I am learning to use the Print module, but this one has me stumped.

  16. kingdex says:

    Good, useful tip. Works fine on MacPro. No Problem

  17. jordi carreras says:

    I prove it, and it possible with the “.” increase, and “-” decrease. I use a spanish keyboard.

    Another shorcut! Thanks!

  18. On my keyboard, the + and – on the number pad don’t work but the ones on the standard keyboard do.

    Win XP

  19. Will Your White Balance Pre-sets for Raw, work with a JPEG virtual copy and not de-grade the copy? I have your Lightroom 2 In Depth CD’s, just great. RJG

  20. I love easy to remember, simple tips like this. Thanks!

  21. fabiopb says:

    Windows XP SP3, english OS, brazilian abnt2 keyboard layout.

    “-” works on numeric keypad
    “-” and “=” work on the standard keyboard.

    Great tip.

  22. Mathias says:

    The + doesn’t work on my Swedish keyboard, XP, HP7400
    but the – does.
    There is quite some other shortcuts which do not work.

    /Mathias

  23. Sam Antonios says:

    Hi Matt

    You might have answered this on other posts so I apologize. I still have a hard time understanding and figuring out color profiles and spaces.
    LR uses ProPhoto but photoshop doesn’t ( i have mine set to Adobe 1998). Monitors get calibrated by different softwares ( I used spyder after reading about it online). Photo papers need their own color profiles from each manufacturer… How do all these “parameters” come into play together? how do they interact?

  24. Jill says:

    Thanks! Great tip. Have already used this one.

  25. Ovidiu says:

    Dooh!!

  26. Sara says:

    Thanks for this tip, I was hopeful that I would figure it out one day! :) I’m running Win Vista and it’s the + and – keys vs. the number pad.

  27. Bill M says:

    I have the same problem as a number of others – Vista PC – “-” works as advertised, “+” doe nothing, but “=” as “Tim” mentioned, works.

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