Sep 30

Sep 30 Capture One Quick Tip: Simulate Lightroom’s “Grid” Mode Keyboard Shortcut

This is a really specific and kind of nerdy tip, but I’ve found that this helps me speed up my workflow in Capture One considerably. If you’re used to Lightroom, you may be used to switching between the grid and develop modules using the “G” and “D” keys. I do this all the time, when I’m working on a project, and I want to jump to different Images. I find it easier than scrolling up and down the film strip at the bottom of the develop module. To do this in Capture One, you show and hide the viewer. There is a keyboard shortcut for this already, but it’s hard to remember and physically awkward to press. Luckily it’s easy to change.

The default keyboard shortcut to show and hide the viewer is Command + Option + V. This requires bending your hand a weird way to do it with one hand, or using two hands. For me this is something I use a lot, and because I also still use Lightroom a fair bit, I decided to change this to the “G” key to match Lightroom. You don’t need the “D” key because there are no separate modules in Capture One, so you’re really just toggling the main viewer on and off.

Changing the keyboard shortcuts in Capture One is fairly simple, but it does require a couple of steps.

Here’s what to do…

Step1: Go to the keyboard editor

To bring up the keyboard shortcut editor go to: Edit > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts

Step 2: Create a new Set

Before you can change the keyboard shortcuts, you need to create your own set. To do this click on the + button at the top right of the interface, and when the dialog opens, enter a name for your set.

Step 3: Search for the “Show/Hide Viewer” command

Next we need to find the right command to change. The menu item we’re looking for is called “Show/Hide Viewer”, so to find this quickly, just type “viewer” in the search field.

Step 4: Enter a new shortcut

Now we can enter a new keyboard shortcut for this command. In the “key” field type the shortcut you want to set. In this case it will be the letter “G”. This will now tell you that the G key is already assigned to the Gradient tool, and that the existing shortcut will be lost if you proceed. If you don’t want to just press escape to abort. You can always reassign the Gradient tool to something else like Command + G (this is unassigned in the default set)

Once you do this and close the window you’re done. The G key will now switch between a full window viewer and a thumbnail grid, and in my opinion is much easier to use than the default shortcut.

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