With all the controls and panels Lightroom lightroom offers to make your pictures look their best, it can sometimes be hard to focus on the actual picture itself: is it any good? Does it need post-processing? Does the post-processing look good?
At moments like these, you want to be able to see the picture itself, without the clutter of the interface. Luckily, there’s a handy shortcut key for turning Lightroom – just temporarily– into a dark room: it’s called ‘Lights Out’ mode and you get there by hitting the L-key. Hitting it once dims the lights. Hitting it twice turns them off. Hitting the L-key again returns the Lightroom lights to full blazing power. 
While you’re at it, you might also want to hit Shift-Tab. That keyboard shortcut will temporarily hide the left and right panels, the module picker and the filmstrip, leaving more room for the content area. That way, your picture will be displayed larger. Want it to be even (slightly more) large? Then hit the ‘F’-key twice: that will put the software into full screen mode, dedicating all the screen real estate to Lightroom.*
Try it: turning off the lights might actually make you see the light on what a photograph needs (or doesn’t need) in terms of further post-production.
* By the way, the Shift-Tab and F-key tricks also work with the lights on. You could also try just Tab, which hides the left and right pane. It’s a useful shortcut on smaller screens, like the ones on laptops.
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