Use Quick Actions to edit photos faster in Lightroom mobile

Quick Actions analyze your photo and suggest automatic edits that are relevant to the image content in the scene.

Published January 26, 2026

00:01

Introduction

One of the best things about Lightroom on mobile is that there are so many ways that you can make your photos look better, including a feature that lets you quickly enhance and improve your images with just a few taps.

Hi, I'm Seán Duggan with the Adobe Learn team.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can take advantage of Quick Actions to automatically enhance specific areas in a scene.

00:25

Discovering quick actions in Lightroom on mobile

I'll tap the Quick Actions icon, and Lightroom will analyze the image to determine which Quick Actions to suggest.

One of the great things about this feature is that it offers you different options that are relevant to the content in the photo.

Since this is a portrait, we have options that make sense for that type of image.

If this was a landscape scene, Lightroom would suggest different Quick Actions that were relevant to that type of image.

00:53

Enhancing the subject with quick actions

First, I'll tap on Auto to see how that improves the entire photo.

That's a very subtle change, but I like what it does.

Next, I'll tap on Subject.

Lightroom will analyze the scene and detect the subject.

I'll choose Warm Pop to brighten the subject and add a slight warming effect.

Next, I can adjust the Amount or the intensity of that preset, and if I want, I can also adjust the Exposure and the Saturation for the subject.

That looks good, so I'll tap the Checkmark in the lower right to apply that.

We'll explore the background enhancements with a different photo.

So, let's move on to the Retouch Quick Actions.

01:36

Retouching portraits with targeted quick actions

As with all of the Quick Actions, Lightroom offers retouching enhancements for specific areas in a portrait.

Let's start with the Eyes.

And I'll brighten the Eyes a little bit.

I'll tap the Eyes icon again to zoom in for a closer view and adjust the Amount slider, so it's more noticeable.

I can also whiten the Teeth or apply smoothing to her Skin if I want.

I think her skin already looks pretty good, so I'll tap the Undo button to turn that adjustment off.

With the Hair adjustment, I can either smooth the hair or enhance the detail, so it's more visible, and I can also enhance only the Clothing in the scene.

So, I'll move this slider to add some saturation to her skirt.

That's looking pretty good.

If I press and hold on the image, I can see the Before view, and when I release I can see the image with all of the adjustments so far.

02:35

Using quick actions for sky and background adjustments

Now let's explore using Quick Actions with a different photo.

With this photo, you can see that we now have a new addition to the suggested Quick Actions.

Since there is sky visible in the scene, we can now apply an adjustment to just that area of the photo.

I'll choose the Blue Drama preset to boost the blues in the sky.

And I can use the sliders to fine-tune that.

The Dehaze control is often very useful in landscape images.

Now this is a portrait image, of course, but since it's only being applied to the sky, a little bit of Dehaze does a really nice job at enhancing the difference between the clouds and the blue sky.

Now let's see what the options are for enhancing the Background.

The preset thumbnails offer several choices for adding a blurring effect to the background.

I'll tap on Subtle.

When you choose one, Lightroom will apply a lens blur effect to the background area.

That's a bit too much, so I'll lower the Amount slider to dial it back a bit.

I'll also explore darkening the background with the Exposure slider.

You can also adjust the Saturation for the background.

By the way, you can always reset a slider to the default position by double-tapping on it.

That's a shortcut that works with any of the sliders in Lightroom on mobile.

04:01

Applying quick actions to multiple people and reviewing results

Finally, let's check out the Retouch Quick Actions when we have an image with more than one person.

Lightroom has detected each person in the scene, and I have the option to apply the Quick Actions to all of the people.

Or I can tap on the thumbnail for a specific face and apply the changes just to that person.

I'll press and hold on the photo to see how it looks before I made any changes.

And when we release, we can see the current version that we've enhanced using only the Quick Actions.

What I love about Quick Actions is that it makes it really easy, even for a beginner, to apply sophisticated enhancements to specific parts of the scene.

And even if you're already familiar with Lightroom on mobile, Quick Actions are a great way to streamline some common image editing tasks.

Give this feature a try with some of your own photos.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you'll learn

Speed up your edits with Quick Actions

Tap the magic wand icon and Quick Actions will analyze your photo and display several one-tap edits that are based on the image content in the photo. Quick Actions are ideally suited for editing and sharing on the go, but they’re also a great way to streamline your workflow even if you’re already familiar with Lightroom on mobile.

Instruction by: Seán Duggan
Adobe Stock Contributors: Danon; Oneinchpunch

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