Lightroom Before & After Shortcut

Let’s unpack it together in this photography tutorial.

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USING BEFORE AND AFTER IN LIGHTROOM:

LR Before & After Shortcut + Editing Trick!

In this quick Lightroom Tutorial you’ll learn how to use the different before and after tools inside Lightroom, plus a Lightroom feature you might never have heard of.

Learn one of the most essential shortcuts Lightroom has to offer: The before and after keyboard shortcut.

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[powerkit_collapsible title=”CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO TRANSCRIPT”]
hey guys Ryan here at signature edits
and inside this video I want to show you
a quick trick with the backslash key
that before after key inside Lightroom
that you might not actually know about
let’s get into it
[Music]
alright so if you’ve been using
Lightroom for any amount of time you
probably know about the backslash key on
your keyboard by clicking that key you
can easily see before you edited your
photo and after which is a certified way
to check whether your photo has actually
improved since you started editing or
you now have a hot mess alright so now
that we’ve established that did you know
that if you hit the Y key instead of the
backslash key on your keyboard it pulls
up a different before after view okay
doing that is kind of neat we can see
the photo beside each other without
having to alternate between the two
going down here where it says Y and Y on
these two little page icons we can
actually alternate our views for the
before and after again this could be
helpful just to be able to see it in a
different setting but did you know you
might have already heard of these ones
but if you go over to our history panel
inside of Lightroom that’s over here on
the left below navigator preset
snapshots you have history and if we go
in here we can see before and after we
made any changes to the photo at all so
we can go back from the very first edit
we made all the way through to the
different settings that I had along the
way while I was figuring things out
testing and seeing which kind of preset
what settings I liked the best this is
very handy
now you might already know about the
history panel but did you know you can
tie it into the backslash key on your
keyboard so let’s say that I actually
want to see before and after with one
specific setting in this history I don’t
want to go back all the way before any
changes I just want to see if I actually
like my changes more since say this step
instead of this step okay so what I’m
going to do is actually go down to this
step and right click in the history
panel we’re going to select copy history
settings to before and now when we hit
that backslash key we’re actually going
to alternate between those two steps
instead of going all the way back to the
beginning we can just preview and decide
quickly and easily which we like best
the same will work if we go and press
the Y button and the Y key on our
keyboard or this little Y setting here
you can see before and after that
specific step once you want to undo what
you’ve done and just go back to seeing
the previous you know in
Gordan photo we just go back here to
where it says import and go copy history
step settings to before and now we can
see the raw version once again so that’s
the before after key inside of Lightroom
I get so many comments on it I figured I
would do a quick video if it was helpful
for you please hit that like button
don’t forget to subscribe for more great
videos and leave me a comment are there
features that I missed or different
tricks that you know about that I should
know about – I would appreciate it leave
me a comment make sure to subscribe and
I will see you in the next one
[Music]
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The before and after keyboard shortcut uses

While you can always just use the reset button, using the key in Lightroom to preview before and after saves time over the long run. Half a second saved multiplied by thousands of photos really starts to add up! The same goes for these other before and after tools – Sometimes having that quick reference photo makes it much easier to get the best possible edit.

What do you think, will you be using the before and after tools in Lightroom, or are you happy sticking with the reset button?

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