What the heck that spray can in Lightroom does

Have you ever used that little spray can icon in Lightroom? Have you ever even noticed it? I know I haven’t, and it turns out to be quite a useful tool. In this video, Anthony Morganti shows you what the Painter tool does and how you can use it to speed up your Lightroom workflow.

I must admit that my first thought when I see a spray paint icon is the one in MS Paint, which I used to create my “artworks” when I was a child. But fortunately, this one in Lightroom is far more useful than that.

First, to be able to see the Painter tool, you need to view your images as a grid in the Library module (hit G on your keyboard). If you don’t see the toolbar under the grid, hit T on your keyboard. If you still can’t see the spray paint icon, go to the far right side of the toolbar, click on the arrow and make sure that “Painter” is checked. There you go!

So, what can you do with the Painter tool? Well, it allows you to apply certain settings to a bunch of images all at once. It’s something like the Format Painter in MS Word. You can choose between Keywords, Label, Flag, Rating, Metadata, Settings, Rotation, and Target Collection. When you choose what you want to apply to a batch of images, you can spray one by one and apply certain changes. Or, you can just click and drag the little spray can on all the images.

I imported a few of my old photos of the jewelry I used to make. I typed different keywords like “earrings,” “necklace,” or “ring” and sprayed photos that belong to a certain category.

I also tried it out with labels, assigning different colors to individual images.

Finally, I chose a preset, sprayed it across all photos, and watched them change from color to black and white. I generally rarely use presets, and even if I do, I adjust it in every photo. But this was only for demonstration purposes.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I never even noticed this little icon. I simply never paid attention to it, yet it turned out to be pretty handy. I’m pretty sure I won’t use it for applying presets, but I think it’s perfect for labels, ratings, and rotation.

What about you? Do you use his tool? Or you have, like me, just discovered what it’s for?

[What The HECK is that SPRAY CAN in Lightroom FOR? via Reddit]