Today’s Question: You mentioned the info overlay for the loupe view in Lightroom Classic in your answer about cropped dimensions for a photo. I never knew about that feature and wonder if you could explain how to configure and use it and whether you have any recommended settings for this display.
Tim’s Quick Answer: The info overlay for the loupe view in Lightroom Classic can indeed be helpful. You can configure the display options in the View Options dialog, and then cycle through the two info overlay displays or no overlay at all by pressing the letter “I” on the keyboard.
More Detail: The info overlay is available in the loupe view display for both the Library module and the Develop module in Lightroom Classic. You can obviously have the info overlay turned off, or you can cycle through two different configurations for the info overlay. The letter “I” on the keyboard can be used to cycle through the first overlay configuration, the second configuration, or to turn off the display.
To configure the display options, start by choosing View > View Options from the menu. On the Loupe View tab you’ll find sections for “Loupe info 1” and “Loupe info 2”, which are the two overlay options that you can configure independent of each other.
Which information you choose to display obviously depends on what information you find most helpful. The overlay presents one line of information at a relatively large size, and two lines below that at a smaller size.
My personal preference is to have the file name for the current photo displayed on top for reference, so I set “File Name and Copy Name” for the first popup, and usually set this for both of the two info overlay configurations. Note that the “Copy Name” portion refers to the name you have assigned (or that was assigned automatically) to a virtual copy. In other words, when viewing a virtual copy both the file name for the source image and the copy name for the virtual copy will be displayed.
I tend to prefer to know the date and time of capture, as well as the general exposure settings. I therefore set the second and third popup for the first info overlay to “Capture Date/Time” and “Exposure and ISO”. For the second info overlay configuration I keep the same options set for the first two popups and set the third popup to “Camera + Lens Setting”. This latter option displays the camera model, the focal length used, and the specific lens used.
There are certainly other options that many photographers may find helpful among the various metadata fields you can display as part of the info overlay. I encourage you to look at the list of options available for the popups in the Library View Options dialog, and find the configuration settings that are most helpful for your specific needs.
