Guide to Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom comes with tons of built-in keyboard shortcuts to help increase your productivity. I’d hazard a guess that the majority of keys and key combinations on your keyboard are mapped to a shortcut.

Within the Lightroom program, however, there is no way to customize these shortcuts. If you want to do that, you need to perform something of a simple hack – use a localization file (TranslatedStrings.txt) to redefine the keyboard shortcuts for various menu options in Lightroom. While there are a handful of hardcoded shortcuts that you can’t seem to change, most of Lightroom’s keyboard shortcuts can be either wiped out or re-assigned to new keys.

It would be fairly simple work – if only there was simple and clear documentation of how each shortcut is named in this file. I haven’t been able to find that lurking around the Internet, so I’m posting all of the information here. This lengthy series aims to offer a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts that can be edited through the use of the TranslatedStrings.txt file.

Getting Started – Create TranslatedStrings.txt

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a TranslatedStrings.txt file. Navigate to your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom folder (usually c:\Program File\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom [Version #]). Open the Resources folder. Create a folder simply called “en.” Your localization file, a simple .txt file called “TranslatedStrings.txt” should be located in this folder.

Windows 7 and Windows Vista User Account Control may give you trouble if you try to edit the file directly in that folder. If that’s the case, create the text file somewhere else (like your desktop or your documents folder). Then, after you’ve made the required edits, copy the file into the Resources\en folder.

The file is a simple text file, and you can create it with any text editor. The built-in Notepad program for Windows is fine. I prefer to use Notepad++ – it’s an excellent piece of free software with features above and beyond the regular Windows Notepad.

What Goes In the File?

The file is essentially a list of variables and values. The TranslatedStrings.txt file creates new values for these variables, and Lightroom’s LUA scripts will access this file to find the appropriate value to use. A basic line in the file looks something like this:

"$$$/Application/Menu/Edit/WatermarkingSetup/Key="

The line starts and ends with a double-quote. Every line starts with “$$$.” It is then followed by an identifier of the module that shortcut applies to (i.e. Library, Develop). This is followed by an identifier of where it is in the menu structure. Finally, the “Key=” is where the shortcut key is defined. If there is no value after the equal sign, that particular shortcut will be wiped out. Any other value (“=1″, “=Shift+T”, =”Cmd+H”).

You can start with a completely blank file if you’d like. You can also use one of the templates I organized (TranslatedStrings Template Files). The archive includes two files that you can start with. One (in the “Blank Template” folder) is more or less a blank slate – 300+ shortcuts, but none of them have a key assigned to them. The other (in the “Standard Template” folder) includes the same 300+ shortcuts with their default keys assigned to them. You can start with one of these files, make your desired changes, and copy the file into the “Resources\en” folder.

You can also include other information in the file that will be ignored by Lightroom (i.e. comments). If the line doesn’t start and end with a quote and contain a valid value, Lightroom seems to just ignore it. So, in my template files, I used standard coding convention to include comments in the form…

/********************/
/***    Comment   ***/
/********************/

Valid Key Definitions

You can use just about any standard key on your keyboard (0-9, punctuation, a-z, etc). However, you cannot use something like a colon, because you need a shift key to create that character. Instead, define it as “Shift+;.”

You can use Shift, Alt, and Ctrl as modifier keys. You can also use Cmd and Option interchangeably with Ctrl and Alt. Lightroom will recognize whether you are on a Windows or Mac and use the appropriate key.

Examples:

• Key=Shift+T
• Key=Shift+Cmd+]
• Key=Shift+Alt+Ctrl+M
• Key=1

You cannot re-use a key that has already been used. If you want to do that, you need to redefine the old shortcut with either a new key or with no key. You can define a shortcut with no key by simply placing a quote after the Key=. For example

• “$$$/Application/Menu/File/PageSetup/Key=”
• “$$$/AgLibrary/Menu/File/OpenCatalog/Key=”

So What Shortcuts Can I Define…?

There are 300+ shortcuts that you can re-define. You could just skim through the template files, they’re fairly well organized. However, in the interest of making this information Google friendly, I’ll include a series of short posts that list all of the valid shortcut values that I know about, along with its standard definition.

First, I’ll post them all in one big group. This will be cumbersome to read, but it will be more useful if you’re trying to search the entire list for a specific shortcut.

Then, I’ll break it down by the module they’re associated with. The associations aren’t perfect (i.e. some of the AgLibrary definitions apply to menu options in the Develop module), but it’s better than nothing.

• Guide to Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
• All Valid Lightroom Shortcuts for TranslatedStrings.txt
• Application Wide Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Library Module Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Develop Module Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Slideshow Module Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Print Module Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Web Module Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Other Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts