Auto advance in Lightroom

Heads Up!

This article is several years old now, and much has happened since then, so please keep that in mind while reading it.

You know how it is. You've shot 698 photos at a wedding, and now begins the painstaking process of sorting and selecting those shots into only the good ones.

So ... you have a couple of ways to come by this process.

Two-step Pocess

I usually do this in two steps:

  1. Sort out the good ones
  2. Rate the good ones

Especially  the first step can be done in various ways. Maybe you're using colour-lables. Maybe you're flagging your images. Or maybe you simply start out by rating your images 1 - 5.

Either way, the process is usually the same. You are looking at an image, then (if using flags) pressing X for rejected or P for picked. And then you move on to the next image.

Well ... here's the trick. 

Activate your caps lock key while going through your selection.


By doing so Lightroom will auto advance to the next photo after you make your selection.

Simple, easy and right in front of you.

The same tip of course applies to step two when you (if you're like me) start to rate the "keepers". The reason why I rate my selected keepers is because I tend to deliver too many photos after a shoot. And believe me, there is nothing wrong with that and no client has ever complained about that. But I have to retouch way too many photos ... and that's a lot of work. So I've started rating the keepers, and in the end I then edit, retouch and deliver only 5-star photos.

I hope you find a tiny joy in these little tips ... you could let me know in the comments :D

Thank you ... and look forward to tomorrow for a more substantial article.

Niels Steinmeier

Niels is on Twitter as