Start using Lightroom Classic with Photoshop
Learn how, why, and when to use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom Classic together.
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Supercharge your photography by using Photoshop with Lightroom Classic
Lightroom Classic and Photoshop are the perfect combo for anyone who loves photography. Lightroom Classic is where you'll organize, share, and adjust your photos so they look their best. Photoshop is where you'll add further edits to your photos–like combining photos, removing flaws, moving objects, applying Photoshop filters, adding text, and more.
Learn how and when to pass your photos from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop to take advantage of Photoshop's editing superpowers in addition to adjustments you make in Lightroom Classic. Then save your photos from Photoshop back to Lightroom Classic to keep track of all your photos in one place.
>> In this series of short videos, we'll explore how and when to use Photoshop along with Lightroom, to take your photos to the next level.
Lightroom is great for organizing and sharing your photos.
And Lightroom's user friendly editing controls are often all you'll need to make a photo look its best.
But, you know, sometimes, you'll want to do something more with your photos than you can accomplish in Lightroom, like, maybe combing multiple photos, or moving an object in a photo.
And you'll want to save your photos with their Photoshop edits back to Lightroom, to keep track of all your photos in one place.
I'm going to walk you through each of those common scenarios and more, for using Photoshop with Lightroom, in this video series.
But first, let's get familiar with the basic editing workflow, from Lightroom to Photoshop, and back.
First, I do most of my photo editing here, in Lightroom's develop module, making adjustments to tone, color, and other photo qualities.
[Auto] As a simple example, I'll click the Auto button, [Auto] here, in the basic panel, which automatically adjusts exposure, contrast, and these other tonal values.
I can tweak any of these sliders, and I can add more adjustments.
When I'm done making those adjustments, I'll take a look at the photo and see if there's any reason to take it over to Photoshop.
In this case, I'd like to remove this colt from the photo.
Photoshop is the best place to do this, because Photoshop has sophisticated retouching tools that are great at removing larger areas of content like this.
Now I could open this photo directly from my hard drive into Photoshop, using Photoshop's File Open command.
But then, my Photoshop edits wouldn't automatically show up back here in Lightroom.
So instead, I'm going to use a Lightroom command, the Edit In command.
I'll right-click the photo, or you can Control-click, if necessary, on your device.
And I'll choose Edit In.
[Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015] Then I'll choose Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
[Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments] In the next dialogue, [Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments] I'll choose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments.
Because, what I want to do is have a copy of this original photo taken over to Photoshop.
And I want that copy to include the Lightroom adjustments that I just made.
And these other options don't do that.
By the way, if you're working with a raw file, you won't see this dialog.
Instead, your raw file will be passed straight from Lightroom to Photoshop at this point, skipping this dialog box.
But I'm working with a JPEG, a non-raw file.
And so, I do see this dialog box.
[Edit] I'm going to click Edit.
That switches me over to Photoshop and opens the file in Photoshop with all the adjustments that I made in Lightroom.
Now let's remove the colt from this file.
I'm gonna try to use the Content-Aware Fill method to do this.
I'll select one of the selection tools in the tools panel.
I'll go with the Lasso tool which draws freeform selections.
And then I'll move over, and I'll draw a selection around the colt, making sure to include a little of the surrounding area.
Now I'll go to the Edit menu and I'll choose Fill.
[Content Aware] And in the Fill dialog, I'll make sure that contents is set to Content Aware.
[Content Aware OK] And I'll click OK.
And the colt is magically gone from the scene and replaced with new content that matches the surrounding area.
[Deselect] I'm done with the selection, so I'll go up to the Select menu [Deselect] and choose Deselect to remove the selection boundary.
Now I'll save the image so that my Photoshop edits show up in a copy, back in Lightroom.
I'll go to the File menu in Photoshop and I'll choose Save.
Take a look at the document tab.
Saving caused the file name to change in two ways.
The word Edit was automatically added to the file name.
And the file format is now tiff, which is the default file format for images passed from Lightroom to Photoshop and back.
Now I can close the saved image in Photoshop and return to Lightroom.
In the film strip, there are now two copies of the photo.
The selected version, which you see up here in the document window, is the .tiff copy that we just saved from Photoshop.
It contains both the change that we made in Photoshop, the colt is gone, and the adjustments to tone and color that we made in Lightroom before passing the copy to Photoshop.
Next to the .tiff copy in the film strip is another version.
This is the original .jpeg.
It contains the adjustments that we made in Lightroom.
You can see them over here in the basic panel, but not the change that we made in Photoshop, because we didn't pass the original to Photoshop.
So that's the basic workflow for moving photos between Lightroom and Photoshop.
You'll use the same workflow in the other videos in this series, each of which focuses on a different common situation, in which you can take your photos further, by taking them from Lightroom to Photoshop and back.
Remove and move objects in your photos with Photoshop
How often have you shot a great photo, only to realize that there's something or someone you didn't mean to capture in your photo? Fortunately, Photoshop has you covered. Learn to bring your photos from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop to take advantage of Photoshop's powerful tools for moving and removing content in your photos.
>> Photoshop is unmatched, when it comes to moving and removing items in a photo.
So it's no surprise that those are among the most popular reasons for taking a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop for further editing, as we'll do in this video.
Here I have a couple of photos in Lightroom, to which I've already applied some basic photo adjustments.
There's some content that I'd like to remove from this photo and move around in this photo.
So with both of these photos selected, I'll right-click either one and following the same workflow I showed you in the first video in this series, [Edit In Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC2015] I'll choose Edit In, Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
[Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments] In this dialog, I'll choose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments.
[Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments Edit] And I'll click Edit.
That launches Photoshop with both of those photos open here.
I'm going to click on the document tab for the first photo.
In this photo, I'd like to try to remove some of these birds from the park.
For that, I'm going to use a relatively simple content removal tool in Photoshop, the Spot Healing Brush Tool.
I'll move into the image and with a brush tip that's just a little bit bigger than one of these birds, I'll click on the bird to remove it.
I'll click on the shadow too.
And I'll click on these other birds.
I can also click and drag with this tool to remove multiple birds at once.
And I'll take care of these birds as well.
This tool does a great job of hiding content like this.
But sometimes, the spot removal tool may not be all you need.
One of the benefits of removing content in Photoshop is that you have multiple tools to choose from.
So let's try out one other tool.
I'll go over to the tools panel.
I'll click on the Spot Healing Brush Tool.
And this time, I'll choose the Patch tool.
Up in the options bar for the Patch tool, I'll make sure it's set to Content Aware.
And then I'll move into the image and with this tool, I'm going to click and drag a boundary around the area that I want to remove.
And I'm including a little of the grass inside this boundary as well, which is important to get the best result.
When I get back to the beginning of my boundary and release my mouse, that creates a selection.
I'll click and hold inside the selection, and I'll drag to another part of the image.
And notice that as I do that, I can see inside the original selection, what content is going to be used as a patch.
I'll release my mouse and Photoshop does its best to blend the resulting patch with the surrounding area.
I don't need the selection anymore, so I'll go up to the Select menu and I'll choose Deselect.
I'm done removing content here in Photoshop, so I want to save the photo so that it automatically appears in Lightroom.
[Save] To do that, I'll go to the File menu and I'll just choose Save.
As I explained in the first video in this series, that saves a copy of the file in the .tiff format with Edit appended to the file name.
Now let's take a look at the other open image.
Here, rather than Remove Content, I'd like to try to move some content.
So I'm going to use a different tool.
I'll go back over to the Patch tool and from the same menu, I'll choose Content-Aware Move Tool.
With this tool, I'll draw a boundary around the object that I want to move, this baby horse.
And as I did with the Patch tool, I'm including a little bit of the surrounding grass inside of my boundary.
When I get back to the beginning, that creates a selection.
I'll click inside the selection and hold down.
And I'm going to move the horse over and up a little bit, closer to his mother.
Now, because I moved him up the hill, he really should be a bit smaller for perspective.
So I'll click on one of the corner anchor points and drag in.
And then I'll go up to the options bar and click the Check mark.
And in just a moment, the horse is moved and the area where he was is filled in with a matching patch.
I don't need the selection so I'll go Select and Deselect.
And I want to save this photo, so that it appears in Lightroom too.
[Save] So I'll choose File and Save.
Returning to Lightroom, you can see that there are now two copies in Lightroom, of each of the photos that we passed from Lightroom to Photoshop and saved back to Lightroom.
Here's the original JPEG of the park photo with just my Lightroom adjustments, and over here is the .tiff copy of the same photo with both my Lightroom adjustments and my Photoshop edits.
Now that you know how to use Photoshop and Lightroom together, you'll have all the benefits of Photoshop's amazing Content-Aware retouching tools, in addition to Lightroom's organizing, sharing and editing capabilities at your fingertips.
Combine images in Photoshop
Make something more of a photograph by combining it with other images in Photoshop. Whether you're making a blended composite that looks like it came straight from your camera, creating a photo collage, or adding texture on top of a photo, you'll need to know how to transfer your photos from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop to combine multiple photos into one.
>> One of the most exciting things that you can do with your photos is to combine them.
If you want to combine multiple photos into a blended composite that looks like it came straight from your camera, you'll need to use Photoshop.
So in this video, I'll show you how to bring multiple photos from Lightroom into a single layered file in Photoshop and blend them together in Photoshop.
Before I take the two photos that I have here in my filmstrip over to Photoshop to combine them, I went ahead and made some adjustments to this landscape photo in Lightroom's Develop module.
You can see the difference those adjustments made if I press the backslash key on my keyboard to display a before and an after view.
Now let's take this adjusted landscape photo and this photo of a moon from Lightroom into Photoshop.
I'd like to do that in a way that automatically puts both photos into one file in Photoshop because that will save me from having to combine images manually in Photoshop.
So I'll select both photos in Lightroom.
I have one selected already.
I'll hold the Shift key and click on the other.
And then I'll right-click either of the selected photos and I'll choose Edit In.
And this time instead of choosing Edit in Adobe Photoshop, I'll use one of the extra options that are available in this part of the menu when you have multiple photos selected in Lightroom.
And that's the Open as Layers in Photoshop option.
And that switches me over to Photoshop where there's one document open that includes both photos.
If you take a look over at the layers panel, you'll see that there are two layers in this file.
The mountain photo is on the top layer, and the moon photo is on the bottom layer.
I'd like to switch the order of these layers so that the moon layer is on top of the mountain layer.
So I'll select the moon layer in the layers panel, and then I'll click, hold, and drag on that layer until I see a border just above the mountain layer.
And then I'll release my mouse.
The moon is obviously too big for the other photo so with the moon layer selected, I'll go up to the Edit menu and I'll choose Free Transform.
That adds this bounding box with anchor points around the moon photo.
I'll hold down the Shift key to constrain proportions and I'll click and drag inward from one of the corner anchor points to make the moon photo smaller.
Now I don't have to get this perfect because I can tweak it later.
Then I'll click inside of this bounding box and I'll drag to position the moon approximately where I think I'll want it.
When I'm done, I'll click the check mark.
Now here's where things get really exciting.
I want to knock out that black background around the moon.
The easiest way is to try to use layer blend modes.
So with the moon layer selected in the layers panel, I'll go up to the blend mode menu, the one labeled Normal to start, and I'll click there.
And here I see a whole list of blend modes that I could apply to change the way the colors in the moon layer interact with the colors on the mountain layer below.
Now I could just select these one by one, but a faster way to try each one out on a photo is to do this.
I'll click off the menu, and then I'll select the Move Tool in the tools panel.
And I'll hold the shift key down as I press the plus key on my keyboard.
And as I do, you can see that this menu is changing as I cycle through each blend mode.
And on the photo, you can see that each blend mode gives the photo a completely different look.
I'd like to move back up the menu, so with the shift key still selected, I'll press the minus key on my keyboard.
And I think this blend mode is giving me the best result.
And this happens to be the Lighten blend mode.
Now I want to tweak the size and position of the moon, so again I'll go to the Edit menu.
I'll choose Free Transform.
I'll hold the Shift key, and I'll drag inward on one of the corner anchor points.
Then I'll click inside the bounding box, and I'll move the moon into position.
And I'll click the check mark.
The next thing that I want to do is save this file so that it appears back in Lightroom.
So I'll go to the File menu and I'll choose Save.
That saves this composite version of the image as a TIF format file with edit appended to the filename.
I can close this image, and then let's return to Lightroom.
Down in the filmstrip in the Develop module, you can see that I now have three photos.
This is my original landscape photo with the adjustments that I added in Lightroom.
Here's my original moon photo, and here is my composite.
So the next time that you're feeling creative, try taking multiple photos from Lightroom to Photoshop to combine them into something new using the techniques that you learned here.
Apply filters to a photo in Photoshop
Photoshop offers many filters for adding creative and special effects, including art filters, a gallery of blur filters, and special effects filters like Liquify. The Liquify filter is useful not only for creative effects, but also to fine-tune features in a portrait.
Filters aren't the only way to get creative in Photoshop. When you're feeling creative, try taking a photo from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop to add layer styles, colorize, warp, convert to 3D, and more.
>> Among the most exciting reasons to take your Lightroom photos over to Photoshop is to take advantage of Photoshop's unparalleled creative capabilities.
Everything from layer styles, to 3D effects, to clipping masks, to warping, and so much more.
Filters are just one example of the scores of creative features that you can apply to your photos in Photoshop.
In this video, I'll walk you through passing a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop to apply the powerful Liquify filter.
It's just one example of how Photoshop's filters can help you take your photos to the next level.
Here, I have a JPEG of a bird to which I've already applied some edits.
But there are still some changes that I'd like to make and for those I'm going to use the Liquify filter in Photoshop.
[Edit In Edit in Adobe Photoshop] So I'll right click and I'll choose Edit In, Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments] I'll choose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments, and click Edit.
That opens the photo for editing in Photoshop.
[Filter Liquify] Here in Photoshop, I'll go up to the Filter menu and I'll choose Liquify.
That opens the large Liquify dialog.
Over on the left are a series of tools specific to the Liquify filter.
I mentioned that I'd like to try to widen the bird's eye.
So I'm going to go for this tool, the Bloat Tool.
I move in to the image and I want my brush tip to be a little bit bigger than the bird's eye.
If it isn't, you can resize your brush using the size slider over here or you can use Photoshop's keyboard shortcuts for changing the size of a brush tip, pressing the right bracket key to enlarge a brush tip, or the left bracket key to make a brush tip smaller.
Now to make the bird's eye a little bit wider, I'm going to click and hold for a second, and that puffs up the bird's eye.
Let me do that again so you can see it.
I'll click and hold and the bird's eye puffs out.
Now I think that's too much, so I'm going to use another one of the Liquify tools, the Pucker Tool, which has the opposite effect.
I'll select the Pucker Tool, I'll move in to the image and I'll click and hold for a second.
And the bird's eye looks just about right now.
Let's take a look at another tool, the Forward Work tool.
I'm going to use this tool to push in this bump on the bird's head, just pushing that bit of content in.
That looks a lot better.
I'll go around the back of the bird and I'll do the same thing back here.
Now this time, I need a smaller brush tip, so I'll press the left bracket key a couple of times.
And then I'll just push in.
Now I'll click OK to close this dialogue box and I'll save this photo with my changes so it appears in Lightroom.
[File Save] I'll go to the File menu, I'll choose Save.
And as we've seen throughout this series the file format is now TIF, and "Edit" has been appended to the filename.
Let's go back to Lightroom to see the photo.
In the filmstrip here in Lightroom's Develop module, you can see that I now have two copies of the photo.
So again, there's the corrected version and there's the original.
Now as I said, filters are just one example of the scores of creative features that you can apply to your photos in Photoshop.
There are so many more creative possibilities available to you when you work with both Lightroom and Photoshop as a team.
And Adobe's exciting creative mobile apps Adobe Fix, Adobe Mix, and of course, Lightroom Mobile expand those possibilities even further.
Add text to a photo in Photoshop
Imagine your photo combined with text as a party invitation, a wedding announcement, or an inspirational image for your social media posts. Learn how to take your photos from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop and back again to add and edit text.
>> Adding text to a photo is a great way to personalize a photo.
In this video, I'll show you how to bring a photo from Lightroom into Photoshop to add some text there.
And we're going to add one more step to our typical Lightroom Photoshop workflow for this project.
We'll learn how to return to Photoshop from Lightroom a second time to edit the text on our photo again.
Before taking this photo over to Photoshop to add text, I'm going to add a preset to it here in Lightroom's develop module.
I'll go to the Presets panel here on the left side of the develop module.
As I hover over presets here, I can see a preview of each in the navigator panel at the top of the column on the left.
I like this preset, so I'll click on it to apply it to the photo.
Next, I want to add some text and that's something you can't do easily in Lightroom.
So I'll bring the photo into Photoshop.
I'll right click on the photo.
I'll choose Edit In, Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
And in this dialog, I'll choose the first option Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments.
I'll click Edit.
That switches me over to Photoshop with the file open and ready for editing.
In the tools panel, I'll select the Horizontal Type Tool.
I go up to the options bar to choose a font, and if you're following along, you can choose any font you like.
And a font size.
And I'll leave the font color at its default of black.
I'll move into the image and I'll type.
[AMSTERDAM] At the end of the first line, [AMSTERDAM] I'll press Enter or Return on the keyboard to add a second line of type.
[NETHERLANDS] Then, I'll highlight the second line by clicking and dragging over it [NETHERLANDS] so that I can change the font on that line.
You can use any font that you like.
I'll click the check mark in the options bar when I'm finished working with the text.
Over in the layers panel, notice that Photoshop has made a new layer.
This is a special type player that's made automatically when you create text with the type tool.
Now I'll come over to the tools panel and I select the Move tool.
I'll click and drag the text into place wherever I want it in the photo.
Now I want to save this image with the type so that it appears in Lightroom.
I'll go up to the File menu and I'll choose Save.
That saves the photo in the TIF format with Edit appended to the filename.
Now let's switch back to Lightroom to see the photo there.
Here in Lightroom, take a look at the filmstrip at the bottom of the develop module and you'll see that I now have two photos.
The one that selected is the TIF that I saved from Photoshop and it contains the text that I added in Photoshop.
Next to it in the filmstrip is the JPEG that I started with to which I added this split tone before taking a copy of the photo over to Photoshop.
I'm going to select the TIF in the filmstrip, the one with the text, and what I'd like to do is to take this photo back over to Photoshop for another round of editing there because I've changed my mind about the text, I'd rather it be white than black.
To return the photo to Photoshop again, I'll Right click, I'll choose Edit In, Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
In the dialog that opens this time, I'll choose Edit Original.
This is the best choice to make when you have a file that has layers in Photoshop and you want to access those layers back in Photoshop.
By contrast, if I chose Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments, I would have just a flattened copy to work with in Photoshop.
So I'll choose Edit Original.
By the way, Edit a Copy does the same thing as Edit Original except that it would give me one more copy of this file in Lightroom, which I don't really need in this case.
And I click Edit.
And notice that in the layers panel I do have both layers available to work on.
I'd like to change the color of this text.
So I'll go back over to the tools panel and I'll select the Horizontal Type Tool.
I'm going to click just to the right of the last letter in the second line and drag over the second line of text.
Then I'll go up to the options bar and I'll click on the color field there.
I'll click on white in the color picker that opens, and I click OK.
Now you can't tell that the second line of text is white now because of the highlight over it.
But you will be able to see that as soon as I click the check mark up here in the options bar to commit that text edit.
Now I'll save the file again by going to the File menu and choosing Save.
Now, let's switch back to Lightroom again.
Here in Lightroom, we can see the TIF that I reedited in Photoshop.
And as you can see, the color of the text on the second line has been changed.
So now you know not only how to add text to a photo and edited in Photoshop but also how to move an image between Lightroom and Photoshop more than one time.
By the way, you can use the Edit Original option to reedit not only type layers in Photoshop but any layers that you add to a photo in Photoshop during a Lightroom Photoshop workflow.
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