All,
I believe the answer is no but it's worth asking.
I have a "good" and a "old-but serviceable" monitor, both 1920 x 1200 and driven by a AMD FirePro 4900 GPU. "Good" means a new color-managed, wider-gamut, Asus PA246. "Old..." means TN-tech Gateway-branded unit bought in 2008. If I make the ASUS the primary monitor under Win7 64-bit I get to see the results of color shifts and contrast decisions in Lightroom, DxO, whatever. I have been looking at these post-processing changes on the Asus wider-gamut display by turning on the "Secondary Monitor" choice. But it's like a tennis match: my head goes back and forth many times a second, because the tool is so far from the better rendered image. Yes, they are set side-by-side on my desk, both horizontal. (I did like the portrait orientation for the tools display(Gateway TN), as it is great for productivity outside of Lightroom.)
I also use a WACOM Intuos5, but I think that does not add anything here. That has its own neck-killing useability issues (...but I like the tool.)
So I believe we do NOT haven access to any kind of tear-away tool palettes. right?
jonathan7007
Maybe I'm missing something here: could you assign the less-visually-critical Grid view to your less-good monitor? Then you could both Loupe view and use Develop, along with their menus, on the better monitor. That's where you ideally want to see the detailed results of your editing, and keeping menus on the same screen seems logical for that (less chance of getting Wimbledon Neck).
Management would maybe work better with grid and palettes brought back together, so you can switch functions over temporarily as needed - e.g. with G, E, shift+G and shift+E. The Shift modifier sets what happens on the second display - AFAICT when one is set to Grid, if the other one is already Grid then that is bumped to Loupe - and vice versa.
Richard,
Thanks... so the best fix is something simple: I swap the position of the two monitors and place the better ASUS on the right instead of left. That brings the develop tools (because they have to be on the right side of the active LR interface) (until version, say, LR6?) "near" the image they are correcting as displayed on the color-managed ASUS. The managed image will fill the screen.
The issue here is that I wanted the tools like adjustment brush, for example, to be moving about on the image *as displayed on the managed monitor*, and if I want that I have to scatter tool panels around the image. So I have to learn more about how to turn all panels except Develop off with quick-acting keystroke commands like the ones you mentioned. Then I have to call them back when I move through images, poke around in the drives or look in Collections, etc.
Not ideal but I can figure this out; thanks for helping.
jonathan7007
I do see how you might want to move tool panels to a different screen, for the best view of your picture - but at the same time, I don't see how you can comfortably do so all the time, because this means bouncing your attention from one screen to the other - the critical editing involves both the image and the sliders together. That was why I suggested keeping Grid view available: it's rather a distinct mode of working in any case. Many things you do there can be done off keystrokes, using icon badges, right-click context menus and so on. I suspect every single LR user has a unique combination of things they like to do with keystrokes, vs things they like to do with the mouse. We work best when the tools are comfortable to us, IMO.
So Tab and Shift+Tab give you instant room to work on your primary (or single) screen, but - importantly - without breaking the chain of thought. My hesitation about jumping the interface back and forth between screens, is that we shouldn't be really thinking much about the interface, we should have our attention on the pictures.
Using loupe info overlay can remove some need to refer to metadata panels, also there's a handy little info summary under the histogram. Once you have some view filter presets saved, some export presets saved, recently accessed collections in the list, and so on... the need to constantly go out of and back to the Develop-window-plus-filmstrip does reduce. Thumbnail badges are great - clicking them takes you to the control involved, and you can manage stacking etc nicely that way.
There are some good details in this post, thanks. I will learn the interface configuration because I agree that it is distracting to fight the UI to get some work done. I am going to make cheat-sheet cards with the keystrokes for UI manipulation you suggest and others. I also will program the WACOM tablet to have some/all of these available on an on-screen radial menu.
I appreicate so much the help regulars offer on this Discussion Board.
jonathan7007
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