I’m all for making my workload easier. By trade, I create social media assets for brands, and that means sometimes taking pictures of things which I then have to edit in Lightroom. Usually, I use my mouse and keyboard to make those fine adjustments to things like exposure, temperature and saturation. As an editor, you’ll know you have to be pretty accurate with these numbers, sometimes increasing exposure by a minimal amount to get your desired result, and using a mouse and keyboard sometimes isn’t possible. That’s where the Loupedeck+ comes in.
The Loupedeck+ is a bit of kit that’s not really bigger than a small gaming keyboard, measuring at around 40cm in width and 16cm in depth, so not a huge amount of real estate taken up on the desk. It’s filled with knobs, buttons and scroll wheels, which each has a function inside Lightroom CC Classic. Take note that this device will not work inside of Lightroom CC or Camera RAW inside of Photoshop.
The driver acts as the software that tells Lightroom that you are using the Loupedeck+, although I had some issues with error messages saying “Socket Connection Fail”. I have no idea what this meant, and the only troubleshooting I could find online were from some unanswered Facebook messages that people had left. The Loupedeck+ software couldn’t see the device at all.
Main functionalities worked as you would have thought, like the exposure, contrast, blacks, whites, shadows and highlights knobs all controlled those functions inside Lightroom, and it was great using them rather than a traditional mouse to edit. Things felt a little more accurate. Same with the hue/saturation scroll wheels. All felt very comfortable and natural while editing.
The whole product feels very solid, and well put together. The buttons even felt similar to a mechanical keyboard, with a smaller travel distance, but I was used to that as I work between multiple keyboards most of the time anyway. The lack of mouse functionality lets this product down somewhat too. I would have liked to have seen some kind of small touchpad next to the arrow keys for practicality. If I’m working on the Loupedeck+ it was a little annoying having to go back over to my mouse.
There are multiple function keys which are all customised inside of Lightroom too, which are preset to do different useful tasks, but may be useless to you. Therefore, Loupedeck have given you the ability to customise these. There are eight P keys across the top, three L keys on the left and six C keys spread out across the face. All could be useful depending on what you are using when. Dedicated undo/redo and copy/paste buttons also speed up workflow too which is a nice touch.
The Loupedeck+ is certainly a niche product, and one that’s focused purely on those who use Lightroom Classic CC. There are various versions available, but the Loupedeck+ is available for around £199.99 online from popular photography retailers. Not cheap, so you must have to really be into your photo editing, or even a career editor before I would recommend picking one of these up. For more information, head over to the Loupedeck website.
