Lightroom’s interface is strongly segregated among the tasks the application is designed to tackle: organizing, developing, and exporting your photos to various media. Accordingly, only the relevant tools and information are presented to you, depending on where you happen to find yourself in the application: this feature (or flaw) is due to the fact that panels can only be displayed when the relevant module is active.

Lightroom also gives you the choice for which tools are displayed in the Library and Develop module’s toolbar. By clicking on the little grey triangle at the very right of the bar, a selection menu will pop up and allow you to customize the toolbar’s contents. The Library and Develop modules each have their own list of features — some of which are common between the two modules — that can be added to the toolbar at the bottom of the main display.

I prefer to keep mine rather minimal: only the tools that don’t have keyboard shortcut equivalents (or only have limited control via keyboard commands) are displayed. In the Library module, this leaves the “Sorting”, “Thumbnail Size”, and “Info” tools; and in the Develop module I only have the “Zoom” slider displayed in the toolbar. Those are my preferences; feel free to choose those that best suit your needs.

On a somewhat related note: does anyone have any clue what the small grey triangle located between the left and right command buttons in the right-most panel (ex: “Sync Settings” and “Sync Metadata” in the Library)? I’m confused as to why it’s there if it serves no purpose.