Lightroom as a extension for Apple Photos

[robertb22665640]

Can someone help me---please.  I have purchased "External Editor for Photos" and have a trial on Adobe Lightroom.   When I go to Photos and attempt to to identify external editors, it does not show up as an alternative to other extension editors.Thanks bob

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Lightroom cannot be used as an external editor for another program.

[robertb22665640]

I find this surprising as the External Editor for Photos App picks up Photoshop Elements--thoughts?

[dj_paige]

By design, Lightroom cannot be made an external editor for another program. Photoshop Elements has no such restriction.

[ManiacJoe]

The reason is that while Photoshop Elements is a photo editor, Lightroom is not.

Lightroom is a digital asset manager, which just happens to have an editor built into it.

Before you can use the Lightroom editor, Lightroom must first become the manager of the photo via the "import" process.

[Conrad C]

Another way to look at it is that it doesn't work because Photos and Lightroom are conceptually the same kind of program. Both are image organizing databases with a parametric (nondestructive) editing module. Neither is an all-purpose, pixel-based image editor. Because of the way they're designed, you can't use Lightroom as an external editor for very much the same reasons that no other program can use Apple Photos as an external editor.

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and others can be used as external editors because they're more like traditional document-based applications. You can open individual image files into them as document windows, edit them at the pixel level, and save the image files. Apple Photos and Lightroom do not work that way; as parametric editors they don't even have traditional Save commands because they leave the original image files untouched.

[Henrik Helmers]

Maybe Adobe updated something, or maybe OP didn't look in the right place. I have an entry for "Lightroom" (not Adobe Lightroom), that triggers the import dialog in Lightroom just fine. Edit in Lightroom, export an edited JPEG, then drag that over to Photos.

There are no technical reasons Lightroom couldn't bundle with it an extension to Photos, but plenty of political reasons. Which is why there is no way to edit in Photoshop either—without third party utilities like the OP and I use.

[adobejama]

I find this odd as Lightroom was listed as an extension on iPhotos.

[jimh53781106]

This is true but not functionally true.  The external editor program can be added to Photos and LR will come up.  The image then has to be sent to LR and edited. The result will be saved in the LR library.  Not as especially efficient work flow..But LR cannot be used as a plugin in the traditional sense.