01. Use the shortcut ‘W’ to quickly be able to select a white balance point for the photo you are editing. Once you have hit the shortcut 'W', simply use the eye drop and select on a white or black point in your image to automatically adjust your white balance.
02. You can control the Basics Panel with ‘.’ and ‘,’ to select a slider such as exposure, contrast, highlights, whites or blacks, and the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ to increase and decrease the sliders value. This makes tweaking a large number of images a lot easier with full keyboard-only control over your temperature, tint, tone and presence.
03. While you can save entire Lightroom colour presets to make post processing images easier and quicker, you can also save presets for local adjustments. For example, if you have a large number of landscape images that all need the same gradual filter to bring out the tone and colour of the sky, you can save a preset and apply the same graduated filter on all the images for unity. The same rules apply for the adjustment brush - a personal favourite to adjust exposure on portraits.
04. Another tip for local adjustments - Hold down the shift key while applying a graduated filter to make it straight. This tip is especially handy if you are applying a graduated filter to an image with a straight horizon, to make sure your adjustments are applied evenly across the entire photograph.
05. When in Develop Mode, press the ‘\’ shortcut to quickly view your original image before your edits. This is a handy feature that allows you to compare your original image to the adjustments you have made. This is useful as it gives you a chance to reset your eyes to see if there are any areas of the image that need more tweaking, or if there are areas of your image that have been tweaked too far and need to be brought back.
06. Use the shortcut ‘V’ to instantly turn your photo black and white.
07. Use Lightroom Presets! Lightroom Presets can save you a ton of time during post processing. Instead of changing each individual slider for every image you are working on, you can apply a preset for one-click editing. You can also save time with Lightroom Presets by hovering your mouse over the preset names in your library and the thumbnail in the top left hand corner will give you a preview of what your image will look with that preset.
08. Sync your photo adjustments to other images. If you are working on a number of photos that you want to present as a series, apply all your adjustments to one photo first and use Lightroom's 'sync...' setting to apply the same adjustments to the rest of your images. This way you only need to adjust temperature and exposure for the rest of your images instead of applying a preset and making all your adjustments one by one.
09. The Straighten Tool within the Crop Tool can be used to straighten an image by drawing a line over any part of your photo that is meant to be straight. The tool will automatically rotate and crop your image horizontally to the line you draw. Enter Crop Mode by pressing the shortcut 'R', then instead of manually finding the Straighten Tool, simply hold down Command (Mac) or Control (PC) to bring up the tool and draw a line over the part of the image you want to be horizontally straight. Once you are happy with the results, press Enter to set the crop.
10. While in crop mode, you can use the shortcut 'X' to rotate between a horizontal or vertical crop.