Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have your thumbnails on one screen, and your full size image on another? Lightroom 1 users thought so and pressed Adobe to provide this functionality. Adobe did so in Lightroom 2. It is very easy to set up: In the Library and Develop modules, on the left side just above the filmstrip, you will see icons for screen 1 and screen 2:

Dual Monitor Buttons

Click on the 2 icon, and a second LR window will open that looks like this:

Secondary Monitor Display

Drag this to your second monitor and size the window to fit.

Your keyboard shortcuts (G=Grid, E=Loupe, C=Compare, N=Survey, D=Develop) still control what you see on your primary monitor.

In the secondary display, in the top left are your options for this display: Grid, Loupe, Compare or Survey. If you choose Loupe, you will see three options to the right: Normal, Live and Locked. Normal works as expected — when you click on an image thumbnail in your grid or filmstrip, the image is displayed on the second monitor. With Live, as you hover over a thumbnail, the image is displayed on the second monitor — you can quickly review one image after another by moving the mouse over each thumbnail. With locked, the image displayed will stay on the screen even when you then choose another one for your primary screen. This is useful for comparing images — for example, on your primary screen you may be working on an image in Develop, and you want to make sure that you set its white balance to have a look consistent with another image. To set it up, select the second image, and on the secondary monitor choose Loupe and Locked. Now select the one you want to work on in Develop for the primary screen.

For those of you who calibrate your monitors (hopefully all of you!), be sure it is your primary monitor that is calibrated, and make all judgments on color and tone from this display.