Question about the preview bar at the bottom of the Library window

[Ellis Vener]

Is there a way to highlight with a color one of the thumbnails in the scroll bar  at the bottom of the Library Window? It would be handy when I am going through a set of similar portraits.

[TonyW]

If you right click on a thumbnail or the image in the grid view and select Set Color Label you could select Red,Yellow Blue etc and the thumbnail surround will change which I think is what you are looking for?

[Ellis Vener]

If you right click on a thumbnail or the image in the grid view and select Set Color Label you could select Red,Yellow Blue etc and the thumbnail surround will change which I think is what you are looking for?

Thanks but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. As I go through a sequence of portraits , I'll select just the series of that one person. I'll call him John. With those selected (highlighted)  I would like to make it more obvious if I glance at the bar  as to which frame  of John   I am currently looking at in the large preview window.

Currently the selected group in the thumbnail bar is highlighted in a light gray  and the frame I am on is slightly brighter, but if the bar height is minimized  the difference in brightness is minimal.  If I make the thumbnails larger the difference in tone  is more obvious - but at the expense of the large window's height.

[TonyW]

Not sure I completely understand but on the assumption that in the Library window you are viewing in Loupe mode a single image and also have the thumbnails on view normally with grey surround.

Would this work for you?
Select all your series of John and set the Colour label to red
On the Filter bar click on the red box to limit your thumbnail display to those red label images only
Now all the thumbnails will be shown with a pale red border replacing the usual grey but the one you are currently viewing will have a light grey surround (with a narrow red frame around the image) which should make it obvious which image you are viewing.

There must be an easier/quicker way but I do not know it  

EDIT: added image of how I have been doing this I hope that by changing the thumbnail colour that the difference may be more pronounced? 

[Ellis Vener]

Clearly I am not being clear! I also don't want to tie up a color label for this purpose. I just want to be able to set  the brightness of the light gray tones so their is a more obvious difference.

[TonyW]

Sorry Ellis but I do not know of a way to do this hopefully someone else will chime in

[Eyeball]

Clearly I am not being clear! I also don't want to tie up a color label for this purpose. I just want to be able to set  the brightness of the light gray tones so their is a more obvious difference.

You were being clear, Ellis.  Tony was just offering a possible work-around to produce more contrast between the selected and unselected images.  If you don't want to use a color for that, then the work-around obviously won't work for you.

I don't think there's a way to change the background and highlight of the thumbnails.  I'll just say though that on my Windows machine, it's pretty easy to see the difference even with small thumbnails.  Maybe you're using microscopic thumbnails or maybe using a Mac and the Mac version uses different gray values.

[RikkFlohr]

Brightness of gray-tone is not user definable. It is reserved by Lightroom to indicate selection status.

[Ellis Vener]

Thank you , everyone.

[Rory]

Ellis - this has been a topic since Lightroom beta 1 :*)  So far this has not gained any traction with Adobe.

[AFairley]

From the responses sounds like there is no solution, but on the off chance, what if you select a darker color scheme (if that's even possible, I know you can do it in PS)?

[RikkFlohr]

Really the only place you can select a different shade is in the background of the Develop Module or Library Module/Loupe View. Right-clicking on the work surface surrounding the image allows you to select a range of gray from white to black.  Unfortunately, the changes are limited to the center working panel and do not extend beyond into the remainder of the interface.

You can't make complete interface color scheme changes like you can in Photoshop.

[fdisilvestro]

Another workaround is to use the secondary monitor option in LR, even if you do not have a second monitor. You can set a large size for the thumbnails in the grid on the secondary monitor, or even better use the "survey" mode and it will display only the range of selected images. In survey mode, the selected image will show a thin white border.

If you don't have a secondary monitor, you can toggle between the views with the F11 key.