The Lightroom Interface

Lightroom was designed to mimic a lightbox, a simple device used to view film slides via transmitted light (light shining “through” the slide, as opposed to prints, which are viewed using reflected light).

Key to understanding the Lightroom interface is knowing that Lightroom is a modular program. The photos stay in the center area of the screen, while the toolbars on the outer edges may change, depending on which of the five modules you are using.

There are six main areas of the Lightroom interface. Some of these change as you perform different jobs within the program, while others stay the same, regardless of which module you have active.

• The Main Viewing Area - a.k.a., the lightbox. Your photos, as well as the changes you make to them, can all be seen in this area.
• The Menu Bar - Like all good menu bars, it contains most of the commands that can be executed by the program, but not all of them.
• The Modules Panel - Located above the Main Viewing Area, it contains the nameplate, which can be customized, as well as the names of the five modules available in Lightroom. Clicking on one of the module names takes the selected photo(s) into that module.
• The Filmstrip - This rests at the bottom of the screen, no matter which module you are in. As the name suggests, it displays thumbnails of images, but also allows you to do some other things, like flagging and rating, whichever module you happen to be using.
• The Side Panels - There are two, one on either side of the Main Viewing Area, and the functions, or “Panes” available within them change as you switch between modules.
• The Toolbar - rests above the filmstrip, when it is active. Although version 2.0 of Lightroom has moved some critical things that used to be on the Toolbar, plenty of its functions remain in this handy place.

You can hide or toggle off any portion of the interface, except for the Main Viewing Area. Doing so increases the size of the Main Viewing Area, giving you either more room to view more photos or a larger space to view the one(s) you have active. See the Tips section for each part of the interface for more on how to do this.

New to Lightroom 2.0 is the ability to work with a double monitor setup. It isn’t quite the same as Photoshop, GIMP, or the other “full-scale” editing programs, where you can place all your toolbars on one monitor and leave the second monitor for just the image you are working on, but it does provide a lot of the same functionality.

Fulfilling its model of a lightbox, it is also possible to change from a classic screen mode, with the menu bar visible, all the way to a Full Screen Mode, where only active photo(s) can be seen. In addition you can either dim or completely black out the things around the Main Viewing Area. Both of these functions allow you to focus on the shot without distractions.

After your first import, the best thing you can do is spend a good deal of time playing around with the interface, so you can hide, show, or otherwise manipulate it at will. With the exception of deleting files, Lightroom doesn’t actually “make” changes to the original file until you export, so mess up all you want. You’ll be more expert after every single thing you do wrong.

None at this time.