Lightroom: 2 LCD Monitors

Every Friday, I receive the sale email from NCIX, a local Internet computers sale company. For many people, it is spam. Me? I look at it before deleting it. Every week they have memory, LCD panels, hard drives… on sale. I've wanted a second LCD monitor for a while and then came the “right” sale: an LG IPS with a 1920 by 1080 resolution at 40% off. The regular 24” LCD monitors are now under $200, but IPS LCD monitors are in the mid to high $300.

Almost all current technology video cards support 2 monitors, even if they do not have the plugs/connectors. The two most difficult parts are:

1. Finding enough desk space to fit both LCD monitors.
2. How to connect both LCDs to your computer.

The simplest case, your computer/video card has 2 DVI connectors, one for each monitor. If your computer/video card has one DVI and one HDMI and the monitor supports HDMI then you just have to use both the HDMI and the DVI cables and you are done.

This new LG LCD only has one DVI connector and one VGA connector. My video card only has one DVI, one HDMI, and one VGA plug. For the first monitor I used the DVI/DVI cable, for the second monitor I used an HDMI cable plugged in the video card and an HDMI to DVI adapter that I plugged into the monitor and I was done for the hardware portion.

Alternatively you could use a USB cable if your monitor has a USB plug. The “problem” with USB is that it's much slower the DVI or HDMI.

For the Mac: I'm sorry, but I do not have access to one to give any instruction. You can give me one so that … or you can start googling and looking at: http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/11/multiple-displays-full-screen-apps-mac-os-x-lion/

In Windows, you can either right click on the background and select Screen Resolution, or you can use the Control Panel > Appearance & Personalization > Display > Screen Resolution

The crucial part is the “Extend these displays” and Windows will do all the “proper work.” You should be able to do the same on a Mac by using the “TwinView” “Panning” and “Position.” (Please remember that I do not have a Mac computer).

Accessing the second LCD in Lightroom

The second window on the second screen can be accessed through:

Accessing the second LCD display in Lightroom

You can only show a few things in the secondary window:

• The Grid operations, it's a standard Grid View layout
• The Loupe view, the single image
• The Compare view, where you can select 2 photos to be displayed side by side
• The Survey view, where you can select multiple photos to be displayed side by side
• The Slideshow view to generate and play a full-screen slide show of either the currently selected folder or currently selected collection

While you are doing “whatever” you want to do in the main window. I wish I could have all the Develop on one screen and the image on the other screen but can't be too greedy…