Another review is going down today and this one is about the Loupedeck +

I’ll be the first to say that I am someone who loves technology. I am always down to try something new to see if it will make me more efficient.

If you have known me for some time than you know that I have a love affair with my Shuttle Pro 2. It’s my secret weapon when it comes to editing faster in Lightroom. However, the Shuttle Pro wasn’t made specifically for Lightroom. It was made to be a universal tool and can be used for many programs. I thought it would be neat to try out a new piece of technology that was made for Lightroom in my off season to see if it could increase my speed even more.

This new piece of technology, my friends, is the Loupedeck +. This keyboard is very expensive compared to my Shuttle Pro 2, and comes with a hefty price tag of $249 on Amazon.

Oooof.

So before I pulled the trigger, I went to Youtube to watch as many videos as I could find on the Loupedeck + to see if it would be a good fit.

I watched so many reviews on Youtube and every single one of them kept ending with the statement “if you edit a ton of images, I can totally see how this will improve your life.”

So I’m over here thinking, “I edit a ton of images so maybe, this will, in fact improve me life.”

Order placed.

When I first got the package and opened the box, I will say that I was very impressed. I mean their packaging is STELLAR!

I was also really impressed with the quality of this thing too! Which wasn’t something I was expecting because some reviews I had read were really talking down the quality. I wonder if they made the build better in the second model (the Loupedeck +) better than the original model (the Loupedeck).

When I first took it out of the box, I was pleasantly surprised to see a few things.

The first was that there were some basic keyboard commands such as shift, alt, option, and control. All things that are super helpful when trying to make the most of a keyboard. These keyboard commands are great when navigating through the film strip in Lightroom.

The second thing I was intrigued by was the strategic placement of custom buttons. I loved that there were two custom buttons right near the arrow keys where I could forsee having my hand placements while working.

The third thing I was really interested in trying, that I can’t currently do with my shuttle pro, is programing custom preset buttons within the Loupedeck + keyboard. The idea that I could click a button for a black and white preset seemed like a nice add to my workflow.

Before plugging in the Loupedeck I tried to sit there with my hands on the keyboard feeling around how I could optimize this. Holding the shift button, using the arrow keys to navigate through the film strip, hitting the sync button by utilizing one of the custom buttons near the arrow keys.

I just wanted to see how quickly I could move my fingers on the keyboard to do certain things without my hand needing to leave the keyboard.

It was a cool exercise to try and look up the entire time and see if I could feel between different dials.

One of the ways to getting faster at editing, in general, is trying to keeping your eyes on the screen the entire time, and utilize shortcuts to avoid time consuming multiple mouse clicks. I’ve gotten really good at this with my shuttle pro, so for me to switch over to something like the Loupedeck +, I’d need to still keep my eyes up, and minimize mouse clicks.

After practicing for a bit, without the keyboard plugged in, I decided to download the software to customize the buttons and try it out on a wedding.

This is where things took a turn, and not for the better.

I didn’t realize how limiting the Loupedeck + software actually was in customizing features. Especially, features that I really needed.

Remember how excited I was about the basic keyboard functions? The shift, control, alt, option buttons?

Apparently you have to constantly toggle to turn those functions on, otherwise it defaults to the color coding labels up at the top. So the idea of holding down the shift key and thumbing with the arrows through the film strip was no longer an option.

The software also doesn’t have a way to input any sort of custom keyboard commands like the Shuttle Pro. So I couldn’t just create a custom button that mimicked the shift key on the Loupedeck + keyboard.

This in and of itself was almost a deal breaker for me. My workflow utilizes so much selecting in the film strip and syncing images together. It seems so inefficient to me to hit the copy button and then the paste button over and over again on each image.

The second thing that I hadn’t considered was the crop tool. The crop dial on the Loupedeck + keyboard helped straightening out the horizon line, but I still needed to use the mouse to bring in the crop to either center subjects, or use the rule of thirds. This may not seem like that big of a deal when reading this. However, it really does mess with the flow when you are trying to keep your hands in one central location to minimize movements and you have to pick your hand up and move over to the mouse.

After these two things, I knew this wasn’t going to be the tool for me. There was just too many precious seconds being lost in the movements of my hands to get to the right place.

That is the thing I love about the Shuttle Pro. I have two hands and one is on the mouse and the other is on the Shuttle Pro. There is no picking up of my hands. They simply rest in their proper places and I can have everything, literally every tool, in both palms of my hands. My eyes don’t leave the screen. Select. Sync. Tweak. That’s my editing style, and it works so well for me.

Now, just because this device didn’t speed up my workflow doesn’t mean it isn’t cool. Because it totally is. It’s a unique experience to almost be able to feel the image while your editing it. It’s a totally different, creative experience to edit with the Loupedeck +. If I was a wedding photographer editing my own images, I could totally see how this would be a fun experience.

However, for me I am focused on speed. I need to work fast without losing quality. That is my number one goal, and the Loupedeck + didn’t help me achieve that.

So what did I do with my Loupedeck +? Thank goodness for Amazon’s 30 day return policy because it is now safely in a warehouse somewhere! 😉

Are you interested in learning how to edit with your own Shuttle Pro? Purchase your own Shuttle Pro V2 on Amazon then grab my Shuttle Pro Starter Pack. It contains all my settings optimized for speed. I’ll even walk you through a couples session editing 100 images in less than 20 minutes. Simply download, import, and start editing!