Add text using Photoshop with Lightroom

Take a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop to add text.

Published December 12, 2025

00:01

Introduction

If you want to add text to a Lightroom photo, maybe to create a postcard, a flyer, or some other design you'll need to use Photoshop along with Lightroom.

This technique starts in Lightroom

00:10

Preparing the photo in Lightroom

so you can take advantage of Lightroom's user-friendly photo management abilities and its user-friendly editing controls.

I'll start by selecting this photo and I'd like to give it a slightly different look here in Lightroom before taking it to Photoshop to add text.

So I'll go over and click the Edit button and in the column of editing controls I'll click Profile.

I'm going to choose Browse All Profiles... and then I'm going to open up one of these categories of profiles the Modern category.

And as I hover over different profiles you can see that the look of the image changes.

I like this look, Modern 06, so I'm going to select that.

If you're wondering what a profile is it’s just a starting place for how a photo initially appears in Lightroom and you could add your own edits on top of this.

But will leave it here for now and take it over to Photoshop to add some text.

01:04

Sending the photo to Photoshop

To do that right click on the photo and choose Edit in Photoshop.

That switches us over to Photoshop and opens the Lightroom photo of the Buffalo, here in Photoshop.

So now to add some text to this image

01:16

Adding text with the type tool

in the Toolbar in Photoshop I'll click the Horizontal Type Tool.

I'll go to the Options bar for this tool and I'm going to choose a font.

You can use any font that you want.

I'm using Arial and Bold and I'm going to make my font size pretty big.

I'll also check the font color.

It's set to white and I'm happy with that.

So then I'll click in the image and I get this text that I can replace with my own text.

So I'll press the Caps Lock key and type EXPLORE.

At this point, if I want to move that text all I have to do is move my cursor away from the text and you can see that it changes to the cursor for the Move Tool, so I can just drag and place the text where I want it.

Whenever you're done adding or editing text in Photoshop you have to commit the text and one way to do that is to go to the Options bar and click the checkmark there or you could press Enter or Return on your keyboard.

You can see that created a new Type layer here in the Layers panel.

02:16

Editing, styling, and positioning text

Let's add another layer of type that we could move or change independently of this one.

Again, I'll click in the image and this time I'll type MORE, and I'll click the checkmark or press Enter or Return to commit that type.

Once you've done that if you want to move the type you have to go over to the Toolbar and select the Move Tool and then you can click on the type and move it where you want it, and these pink guides show up to help you align it with the other type layer.

I can also edit any of the text that I've added by selecting the Type Tool and clicking very close to the text and dragging over the letters that I want to change.

So let's say I want to change the color of those letters.

I'll go to the Options bar and click the color field and I'm going to choose a light blue.

Let's move this over so we can see if we like the color.

That's fine, so I'll click OK here in the Color Picker.

And then again, I'll click the checkmark in the Options bar or press Enter or Return on my keyboard and I'm done adding text here in Photoshop.

03:18

Saving the image and returning to Lightroom

Now the important thing to remember is that you have to save the image and close Photoshop when you're done to get this version back into Lightroom.

File, Save and I'll Quit Photoshop.

And when Photoshop closes, you can see the image back here in Lightroom and you can see that it has the text that we added in Photoshop.

If I click the Grid icon, I can see that there are two images stacked together here in the photo grid.

If I click the number 2 that will open them both down here so we can see them.

I'll double click the one on the right.

This is the version that we started with in Lightroom and on which we changed the color profile in Lightroom.

If you wanted to you could change the profile to something else or add other edits to this one.

And then over on the left we have the version that contains both our Lightroom change and the text that we added in Photoshop.

So that's how you use Photoshop with Lightroom to add text to a photo.

This sample file contains assets provided by Adobe Stock for your tutorial practice purposes only. Check out the ReadMe file in the folder for the terms of use for this file. Adobe Stock has millions of royalty-free images and videos for your commercial use. You can get 10 images with a free month trial.

What you learned: Use Photoshop with Lightroom to add text to a photo

Follow this cross-application workflow:

Start in Lightroom to take advantage of its intuitive photo management, photo editing, and collaboration features.
Lightroom doesn’t include text tools, so pass a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop when you want to add text to a photo to make a postcard, flyer, banner, or other text-based design.
Use Lightroom’s Edit in Photoshop command to hand the photo off from Lightroom to Photoshop.
In Photoshop, use the Type tool to add and edit Type layers.
Click File > Save and File > Close.
Quit Photoshop.
Back in Lightroom you now have two versions of the image in a Stack: the original with any edits you applied in Lightroom, and a TIF with the changes you made in Lightroom plus the text you added in Photoshop.

Adobe Stock Contributor: Christian
Instructor: Jan Kabili

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