Get started with Lightroom for mobile (Android)

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Visit the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile Getting Started page to learn about getting started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile.

I have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile. How do I get started?

Get to know the workspace

Gallery view

Opening the Lightroom app instantly gives access to edit your device's photos in the Gallery view. To view the Albums on your device, select the dropdown menu and select an album to populate the corresponding files to the Gallery view. You can select any photo to start editing. The edited photo will appear in the Lightroom view, and a Lightroom icon ( ) will appear in the top-left corner of the photo in the Gallery view.

Filter and Sort photos in the Gallery view

Select the sort icon to filter and sort the files by newest to oldest or vice versa. You can also filter the files in Gallery view by tapping the filter icon and selecting any one or multiple Filters.

• JPGs/PNGs
• Videos
• Raws

Lightroom view

Select the Lightroom tab to view all the photos you've already edited in Lightroom or synced from Lightroom desktop or Lightroom Classic. You can select the drop-down icon menu to view and select the Lightroom albums or Create new.

Filtering and Sorting order in the lightroom view

You can specify the order of how the files appear in the Lightroom view. Select the sort icon in the screen's upper-right corner, and choose one of the following Sort by options from the pop-up menu.

• Capture Date
• Import Date
• Modified Date 
• File Name
• Star rating

Once the order is selected, you may also choose Reverse order for ascending or descending order of the sorted list.

To filter the files in Lightroom view, select the filter icon and choose from the following Filter by options:

• Star rating
• By Flag
• Type
• Camera
• People
• Location
• Keyword
• Edited

All Photos view (all Lightroom photos)

All Photos view for subscribed users is a collection of all your imported and edited photos across all Lightroom devices. For freemium users, it's a collection of all photos edited within the app. To access the All Photos view, select the Lightroom tab in the bottom panel of the screen and select All Photos from the drop-down icon menu.

People view

The People View in Lightroom for mobile (Android) recognizes and groups photos of the same person in a cluster. You can easily browse through the photos of any particular person using the People View. The People View in Lightroom for mobile (Android) is disabled by default, for new users.

View people in your photos

Select People from the Library view to navigate to the People View. In this view, you can access clusters of photos detected for a particular person. The total number of photos for each person is listed below the cover photo of the cluster.

Show and Hide People

Merge People

You can combine photo clusters of the same person under separate people buckets using the Merge option. However, you cannot undo the merge action.

Sort options in People View

Name a people cluster

Rename a people cluster

To rename a People cluster, tap a People cluster in the People View and do any of the following:

• Directly edit the name at the top of the named cluster. Once you have edited the name, tap tick icon at the bottom of the keypad.
• Tap three dot icon at the upper-right corner of the screen and select Rename Person. You can then edit the name at the top of the cluster and tap the tick icon at the bottom of the keypad.
  

Remove photos from a people cluster

Move photos among people clusters

You can now manually select and move photos from one people cluster to other if you feel any of the photos don't belong to that cluster. The move operation is valid for both named and unnamed clusters. Change of cluster is also reflected in the Info panel with updated People tag corresponding to the new destination cluster.

To move photos from one cluster to other, do the following:

Disable People View

To disable People view, follow these steps:

Shared Albums view

In the Lightroom view, from the drop-down menu, select the My albums to navigate to Shared, which lists all the albums shared with you or the ones you've shared publicly.

Community view

Grid view (viewing photos in an album)

Specify a cover photo for the album

By default, Lightroom picks one of the pictures to be the cover photo for the album. You can change this option and specify a photo of your choice.

1. In the Grid view, tap and hold a photo to select it.
2. Tap three dot icon to bring up the context menu and select Set as Cover.
   

Filtering options

In the Grid view, you can set a filter to see only specific photo filtered based on their flagging status, star rating, or other filter options.

Tap three-dot icon located at the upper-right of the Grid view. Choose one of the filtering options, as explained in Filter Photos.

Sorting and Segmentation options

In the Grid view, you can choose to view a flat grid or segment photos in the grid. Further, you can sort the photos by capture time or modification date.

Tap three dot icon located at the upper-right corner in the Grid view. From the context menu that appears, choose any of the following options:   

Grid Segmentation

When you enable this option, Lightroom for mobile (Android) segments the grid photos By Month (default). You can also choose more segmentation options—By Year, By Day, By Hour.   

Sort By > Capture Date | Import Date| Modified Date | File Name | Star Rating

Select one of these sorting options to reorder the display of photos based on the selected criteria. Clicking the option again toggles between ascending and descending orders.

You can also sort by File Name and Star Rating when the Grid Segmentation is off.  

Sort By > Custom Order

Use this sort option to manually reorder your grid photos.  

Tap the edit icon beside the Custom Order option, to show the Reorder panel. Long-press a photo and drag-drop it to the desired location, guided by a blue markup line that is visible as you drag a photo.

Tap the Custom Order option again to toggle between ascending and descending orders.

You can sort by Custom Order when the Grid Segmentation is off.

Loupe view (preparing to edit a photo)

The Loupe view is available when you select a photo in the Grid view. Only one photo is visible at a time. In the Loupe view, you can apply Masking, Healing, Crop, Presets, and more.

The Loupe view is the window where you will perform edits and modifications on a photo. In addition to modifying the photo, you can share by mail or messages, copy, move, and more. 

Sidebar

The sidebar, when expanded, allows you to specify certain preferences and view your disk usage. You can also view a list of shortcuts used in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile (Android).

• To expand the Sidebar, select () at the upper-left corner of the Lightroom for mobile (Android) window.
• To collapse the Sidebar, swipe it to the left.

Contextual Help

Starting with Lightroom for mobile (Android) version 5.0, when you switch to the Loupe view, you can view the Help icon  at the upper-right corner. Tap the Help icon  to access the Contextual Help menu.

Using Contextual Help, you can easily find help within Lightroom for using a tool or feature. You can find and select the tool or feature that you want help with and based on where you currently are in Lightroom for mobile workspace, Lightroom will guide you to that tool or feature.

Find help for a tool or feature

Search resources using keywords

Set app preferences

Note:

Device Info & Storage > Manage Storage

When you clear or purge the offline content of a locally stored album, Lightroom for mobile (Android) removes cache files stored for offline use in that album. Any images in the album that also marked for offline use in another locally stored album are not removed. Your images remain in the album and are not deleted.    

Device Info & Storage > Clear cache

Clearing the cache removes any cache files stored for offline use by the Lightroom for mobile (Android). However, the offline content of the albums that you've stored locally is not impacted. Clearing the cache doesn't delete any of your Lightroom photos.

Learn essential photography workflows

Once you've signed in and acquainted yourself with the workspace in Lightroom for mobile (Android), here's what all you can do with your photos:

• Capture photos - You can capture photos in Auto, Pro, or HDR modes. You can use Lightroom's in-app camera to adjust settings like shutter speed, focus, flash, and others, in the Pro mode. You can capture photos in DNG raw formats on supported devices.
• Search and organize photos - You can create albums and further organize them into folders. You can also arrange photos in order using filter options. You can search for photos within an album or in the All Photos view using metadata, keywords, and facets.
• Edit photos - You can apply many cool edits to your photos. You can crop your photo and adjust its tonal scale. You can apply selective edits and even remove unwanted objects from your photos. You can also choose to apply various Presets and Profiles or create a custom preset and apply the same.
• Save, export, and share photos - You can save photos to which you have made edits as well as export original photos. You can share an album of photos or a random selection of photos as a shareable link or to Adobe Portfolio while controlling whether details like copyright data, location data, and metadata are available to the viewer. You can also include a custom watermark in your photos while sharing or saving them to the Camera Roll.