LR 3 & 4 tips 'n' tricks part 2

Virtual Copies and Snapshots The shortcut to make a virtual copy is Ctl/Cmd + ‘(the apostrophe). VCs don’t take up any space on your hard drive, and you will find them useful to try out new presets and special effects; compare B&W and color versions of the same image; maybe a different crop. Just remember that virtual copies are only stored in the catalog and not as xmps. If you want to save the version in the xmp data, you’ll have to turn it into a snapshot. A snapshot remembers the slider settings at that specific history state and will write that info to xmp. To create a snapshot, just click on the + to the right of Snapshots (above History), name the snapshot, and press CREATE. From there you can make any adjustments you want, but you can always go back to the snapshot you created along with its settings.

Zoom either by using Ctl/Cmd and + (the plus symbol) to zoom in, or Ctl/Cmd and – (the minus sign) to zoom out. You can also use the zoom options in the Navigator panel at the top left—click on FIT (I use this 100% of the time) then move over to the drop down which allows you to switch through other zoom ratios. You can then click and drag on the box in the navigator window to move the zoom tool around. If you usually use two ratios—for example, FIT and 2:1, click on FIT then 2:1, and use the spacebar to toggle between the two. It’s like an instant custom preset. The Z key does it too.

Crop Tool Tip How can you maintain one crop size--like 8×10 --without having to select it each time as you go through a folder of pictures? Use the keyboard shortcut (Shift + A), which lets you crop to the same aspect ratio as the previous crop. Bear in mind that you need to be in Develop for this to work and that you must apply a crop to the first image. The ratio in the crop is copied to the next image. It’s not in the same location though. It’s centered and will be the same height/width as the image depending on the ratio and orientation. To apply the same crop to a number of images (i.e. same location and size) use the Sync button with Crop selected in the dialog.