A Speed Key is a key on your keyboard that is assigned to a Lightroom slider.

When a Speed Key is held down it activates its superpowers!

It enables you to increase or decrease an assigned Lightroom slider with any of the following methods;

By scrolling your mouse wheel
(Scroll Up to increase or Scroll Down to decrease the slider)
Arrow keys
(Left & Right for normal changes)
(Up & Down for the alternate Shift Changes)
Left-click and drag the mouse left/right or up/down
Mouse cursor left/right or up/down
By sliding your finger on the trackpad left/right or up/down

For example to increase the exposure…

Simply press and hold “Q” then scroll the mouse wheel up or use any of the methods mentioned above.

Yes, absolutely!

Speed keys work seamlessly with Lightroom.

Both a Speed Key and Lightroom keyboard shortcut can be assigned to the same key. Both will continue to work as normal. 

Tapping the Speed Key will activate the Lightroom keyboard shortcut as normal, but pressing and holding a Speed Key will activate the Speed Key function instead.

For example, “Q” is assigned to Spot Removal. If you tap “Q”, it will activate the Spot Removal tool as normal, however pressing and holding “Q” will activate the Speed Key’s superpowers allowing you to adjust a slider!

A Hokey is a key that is assigned to either increase or decrease a develop slider by a given amount.

Pressing Shift+Hotkey can apply a different defined amount.

An action key, when pressed, can perform one of the following four types of actions.

You can create as many Action Keys as you wish.

LrSK takes standard keyboard shortcuts to another level.

The power of Action Keys in LRSK is that it enables you to create keyboard shortcuts that activate your favorite masking tool (brush, radial, linear gradient, AI Select Sky, AI Select Subject or AI Select Background), along with your favorite masking preset already selected and or applied.

For example, you can create an action key to darken the background from the subject. This Action Key will activate the AI Select Background masking tool and apply the burn preset. Quickly with the press of a single key or key combination.

Another example is dodge and burn brushes! Press one key that will activate the brush tool and select dodge preset and another key to activate brush tool and burn preset.

1. If the Action is a masking preset, this section will display the name of the masking preset to be applied. Otherwise, it will display a description of the action.
2. If the Action is a masking preset, an icon will indicate the mask tool. For example in the highlighted row. When the Actions Speed Key + Q keys are pressed, the color range tool will be activated and the Soften Skin (Lite) preset will be selected and or applied.
   Lightroom Keyboard shortcut
   Lightroom Command
3. Action Key – This is the key(s) to be pressed to apply the action.
   This icon indicates that the Actions Speed Key must be pressed in combination with the action key. (Default is the Tilde Key “~”)
4. Edit and remove Action Keys.
5. Click here to add a new action to your list.

In our workflow, we like to slightly soften our client’s skin.

To do this, we have created an Action Key to the color picker tool with the soften skin preset already selected for us.

Now when we press “~”+”Q”, Lightroom will bring up the color picker tool allowing us to select a range of skin tones to soften.

Another common task that we do, is slightly brighten our subjects, to separate them from the background.

All we have to do now to accomplish this is press the Action Key combination “~”+”A” and Lightroom will select the Subject and apply the Dodge (Lighten) preset for us.

This prevents many mouse clicks and searches in the masking preset list, improving our workflow and reducing our editing time in Lightroom.

The Speed Menu provides you with quick access to your favorite masking presets and masking tools at the press of a button.

For instance, if you want to use the “Soften Skin” on your portrait. We simply click on the “color range” button in the “Soften Skin” row.

With a single click, Lightroom will create a new mask, select the color range tool, then select the “Soften Skin” masking effect.

Now with the color range tool already activate, simply select the color range on the subject’s skin to complete your action.

Here are some details on each section of the Speed Menu.

1. Quick access buttons for Select Subject, Select Sky, and Select Background AI.
   This will create a new masking layer.
2. A button displaying the masking effect preset name with two actions. If the masking tool is currently active in Lightroom, Lightroom will apply the masking effect preset you clicked on. If the masking tool is not active, Lightroom will create a new masking layer, select the masking effect preset and activate the brush tool for you.
3. When you click on one of these buttons, Lightroom creates a new masking layer, selects the masking tool you clicked on (ie: Brush, Radial Gradient, etc…), and then activates the selected masking effect preset (ie: Dodge, Burn, etc…)
   From left to right the tools are; Bush, Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, Color Range, Luminance Range, Select Subject AI, Select Sky AI, and Select Background AI.
4. Remove the masking effect preset from the Speed Menu
5. A handle for sorting your masking effects by clicking and dragging.
6. Add a masking effect preset to the Speed Menu.
7. Quick access buttons for manipulating the active mask.

First, uncheck the “Auto-hide Heads Up Display” on the main application if it is not already unchecked.

Now click and drag on the top bar to reposition it.

You may choose to re-enable “Auto-hide” to have the HUD visible only when a Speed Key is being pressed.

To move the Speed Menu, it must be visible first by pressing the assigned Speed Menu Key or unchecking “Auto-hide Speed Menu” on the main application.

With the Speed Menu visible, click and drag on the top bar to reposition it.

If you have downloaded the zip file containing the Lightroom plugin folder you can either extract it to the default Lightroom Plug folder or use the Plug-in Manager to add the plugin to Lightroom.

Detailed instructions can be found here.

LrSK supports both Microsoft Windows and macOS.

Super Keys are not working after installation on macOS

How to backup / restore settings