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Get started with Lightroom for mobile (Android)

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Learn how to sign in and set up Lightroom account on your Android device. Get to know the workspace and set up app preferences.

Adobe Lightroom for mobile is a free app that gives you a powerful, yet simple solution for capturing, editing and sharing your photos. And you can upgrade for premium features that give you precise control with seamless access across all your devices – mobile, desktop and web.

Don't have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile (Android)?

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?

On your Android device, tap the Lightroom app icon.
Sign in with your Adobe ID, Facebook, or Google.

Sign in to Lightroom for mobile on your Android device
Once you've signed in, you can capture, import, search and organize, edit, and even save, share and export your photos.

Get to know the workspace

Library view

The Library view is a listing of all the albums and folders that you either created in Lightroom for mobile (Android), or synced from Lightroom desktop or Lightroom Classic. From the Library view, you can easily navigate to the All Photos view.

Additionally, in the Library view tap the () icon next to a shared album name and perform any of these operations:

Add Photos - Select this option to add photos to the album you are in.
Store Locally - Select this option to locally store the photos contained in the album you are in.
Share & Invite - Select this option to share and invite others to view or contribute to an album.
Move to Shared Photos - Select this option to move the album to Photos Shared to Web container that lists your ad hoc shares .
Mov e to Folder - Select this option to move the album to a folder under Library view .
Renam e - Select this option to rename your album .
Delet e - Select this option to delete your album. However, this doesn't delete the photos in the selected album.
Slideshow - Select this option to display the photos in your album as a slideshow.

Sorting order in the Library view

You can specify the order of how the folders and albums appear in the Library view. Tap icon at the upper-right corner of the Albums section.

From the Sort By menu, choose one of the available sorting options.

All Photos view (all Lightroom photos)

All Photos view is a timeline-based view of all your Lightroom photos segmented by year.

People view

View people in your photos
Show and Hide People
Merge People
Sort options in People View
Name a people cluster

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.

The No People Found Yet screen message is displayed when Lightroom is still analyzing all your photos to find people or when there aren't any people in your photos.

People option to group photos of a person in a cluster

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

Tap icon from the upper-right corner of the People View.
Select Show and Hide to bring up the Show and Hide People panel.
All people clusters that are shown in the People View are selected by default. In the Show and Hide People panel, select a hidden cluster to show it. To hide a cluster, deselect it.
Tap the icon at the upper-right corner to apply your selection.

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.

Tap icon from the upper-right corner of the People View.
Select Merge People to bring up the Merge People panel.
Select the people clusters that you want to merge.
Tap at the upper-right corner. In the Are these the same person? dialog box that appears, approve the suggested cluster name or rename the cluster to a desired person's name in the Add a Name field.
Tap Merge. All photos of the selected people clusters will merge together into one cluster. To exit the dialog box without the merge action, tap Cancel.

Note:

Lightroom for mobile (Android) can detect if two clusters belong to the same person. In this case, you can view a suggestion in the top panel to merge the clusters when you open one of them. Tap Yes to merge the clusters or No to not merge. If you tap No, the merge suggestion for the specific clusters will not be shown again. You can also tap the cancel icon to remove the suggestion. The cancel action removes the suggestion only for that particular time and it re-appears on opening a cluster again.

Sort options in People View

Tap icon from the upper-right corner of the People View.
Select Sort by option to bring up the Sort By panel.
Select an option from the Sort By panel to sort your people clusters:

First Name    Sorts named people clusters in alphabetical order of their first names

Last Name    Sorts named people clusters in alphabetical order of their last names

Count    Sorts people clusters by the number of photos contained in the clusters

Tap your selection again to toggle between ascending and descending order of the selected sorting option. Named people clusters always show up above the unnamed clusters.

Sorting options in People view

Name a people cluster

In the People View, tap the unnamed cluster. The cluster opens.
In the open cluster, tap the Add Name field at the top of the cluster and enter the desired name.
Tap at the bottom of the keypad to save the name of the 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 at the bottom of the keypad.
Tap 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 at the bottom of the keypad.

Remove photos from a people cluster

In the People View, tap the name of a cluster to open it.
Long press a photo to enter multi-select mode.
Select the photos you want to remove from the cluster.
Tap from the top menu to bring up the Delete photos dialog box.
Select Remove photos from person to remove the selected photos from the cluster. Select Delete to delete photos from All Photos and any corresponding album.

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:

Long press any photo in a People cluster to enter multi-select mode.
Select the photos you want to move.
Tap from the top right corner.
Tap Move To in the context menu.
In the Move photos to window that opens, select your destination People cluster and tap at the top right corner.

Disable People View

If you're a new user, People View is disabled by default. When the People View feature is enabled, Lightroom desktop and Lightroom for mobile (iOS and Android) analyze photos in the cloud to detect people to form clusters in People view.

When you disable People View, all existing face model data is deleted from Lightroom servers. Lightroom then no longer analyzes new photos and does not automatically group them into clusters. If you have any existing clusters in People View, they remain the same and are not deleted.

To disable People view, follow these steps:

Select Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Adobe Lightroom > Preferences (macOS).
In the preferences dialog box, click the General tab.
Under the Privacy section, select Enable People View. If you want to disable People view, deselect this option.
Click Done.

To know more about this preferences setting, see General preferences.

Do one of the following to access the Settings menu:
- If you're in the Albums view, tap the Settings icon () at the upper-right corner of the screen.
- If you're in the Grid view or Loupe view, tap the three-dots icon at the upper-right corner of the screen, and select Settings from the pop-up menu.
In the Settings panel, select People View to enable the feature. If you want to disable this feature, deselect this option.

Launch the app and tap App Settings () in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Select Preferences > People View and use the toggle to turn on or off the People view categorization.

Shared Albums view

Tap the Shared Albums tab to navigate to the Shared Albums view, which is a listing of all the albums you've shared publicly. You can also view the albums shared with you in this view. For more information, see Share an album.

Learn view

The Learn view provides a free and easy way to learn a wide variety of editing techniques while working within the app. You can access tutorials from a range of professional photographers and photo educators, and apply the edits, step-by-step, right within Lightroom mobile. For more information, see Get hands-on experience with interactive tutorials.

Discover view

The Discover view provides photos by fellow photography members. You can browse through different categories of photos, and tap them to see how the photo was edited, step-by-step. You can also save the edits as a preset. For more information, see Discover inspirational photos.

Grid view (viewing photos in an album)

The Grid view is available when you are looking at the photos within an album. In the Library view, tap an album to open the Grid view.

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.

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

Note:

You can't specify a cover photo for All Photos album. You can only specify a cover photo for the albums that you've created.

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 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 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 tap a photo in the Grid view. Only one photo is visible at a time. In the Loupe view, you can apply Adjustments and Presets, Selective edits, and also use the Cropping tool.

Note:

To view the Exif information of a photo in the Loupe view (Edit panel and Rate & Review panel only), tap at the upper-right corner and enable Show Info option from the menu that appears. Now, you can tap on the displayed information to cycle through the metadata.
To view Histogram of a photo in the Loupe view, tap icon at the upper-right corner and enable Show Histogram option from the menu that appears.

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.

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, tap () at the upper-left corner of the Adobe Photoshop 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.

Access Contextual Help

Note:

If you can not find the Help icon , tap and select Help to access the Contextual Help.

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.. You can also learn the fundamentals of Lightroom by following step-by-step guided tutorials on how to improve your photo.

Find help for a tool or feature
Search resources using keywords

Access guided tutorials

Find help for a tool or feature

Tap the Help icon at the upper-right corner in the Loupe view.
In the pop-up menu that is displayed, the first section displays tutorials for specific tool and features such as Exposure, Contrast, Shadows, and more. Tap More Tools & Features to view the entire list of tutorials.
Tap a tutorial of your choice and follow the steps within the app to learn about it.

Access guided tutorials

Tap the Help icon at the upper-right corner in the Loupe view.
In the pop-up menu that is displayed, the second section displays link to guided tutorials. Tap View Tutorials to view the entire list of tutorials.
Tap a tutorial of your choice and follow the steps within the app to learn about it.

Note:

You cannot export or download the sample photo that is provided with the tutorials.

Search resources using keywords

Tap the Help icon at the upper-right corner in the Loupe view.
In the Search bar at the top of the pop-up menu, enter a keyword that is relevant to your interest. This can be a tool or feature.
The search results appear as you type in the keyword. In case you are unable to find what you are looking for, try an alternative keyword.

Set app preferences

Note:

Sharing Options have been moved from preferences. To access the Sharing Options, tap the icon while sharing or exporting your images.

Account. Tap to view your subscription status, cloud storage usage, and sign out option.
Premium Features. Displays the premium features that you get when you upgrade to a paid subscription.
Preferences
- Enable Auto Add. Switch on Auto Add From Device to automatically import any new picture from the Camera Roll or Gallery. You can also choose the formats to import - JPG/PNG and Raws.
- Photo Import Options. Specify settings for importing photos.
  - Raw Default. Specify default settings to process raw photos during import. For more information, see Set up raw defaults.
- - Add Copyright. Optionally, add your copyright metadata to the images while importing them.
- Send Usage Data. Switch on, to get a more personalized experience and improve product features by allowing Lightroom to send information about how you use the app to Adobe.
- Use Cellular Data. Switch off, to sync only over WiFi. Switch on to sync using the bandwidth on your cellular data plan. Learn more.
- Only Download Smart Previews: Switch on to only download reduced resolution, editable proxies of your photos. Switch off to auto-download full-resolution photo on supported devices* while editing.
  *Check the App Version in Device Info & Storage > Device Info; if the App Version displays 'Arm 8', this feature is supported on your device.
What's New. Displays a chronological list of fixes and improvements made in Lightroom for mobile (Android).
About Lightroom. Tap to view the names of the awesome people who made Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile (Android).
Device Info & Storage
- Device Storage. Displays how much local space is available to Lightroom for syncing and importing image data.
- Manage Storage. Tap to view a list of all the albums for which you've enabled the Store Locally album option. In the list of albums displayed, choose one or more albums and tap Clear to release it's locally stored copies and free up space on your device; the originals are still backed up in the cloud.
- Clear Cache. Tap to clear previews and temporary files, from your mobile device. No photos or edits are deleted.
- Device Information. Tap to view the Android OS version, Open GL version, DNG capture supported (Yes/No), HDR capture supported (Yes/No), Manufacturer, and Model of your mobile device.

App preferences — The Sidebar; representative snapshot from Lightroom for mobile (Android).

Help & Support
- Check out FAQs. View answers to frequently asked questions in the web browser.
- Access our Support Forum. Tap to access support forum in the web browser.
- Contact Adobe Support. Tap to open Adobe Customer Support page in the web browser.
- Request a feature. Tap to access Lightroom for mobile (Android) forum where you can request a new feature.
- Reset Coach Marks and Dialogs. Tap, to restore the gesture-tips and help overlays displayed after you installed Lightroom for mobile (Android).
- Guided Tutorials. Learn how to use Lightroom for mobile (Android) with the step-by-step, interactive tutorials.
- Gesture & Keyboard Shortcuts. Tap, to view the gestures shortcuts and keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Lightroom for mobile (Android).

Technology Previews. View and enable the experimental features listed here and provide feedback to Adobe.
- Notify Me About New Previews. Select the check box to be notified when new previews are available.
- High Dynamic Range Capture. Enable to use the HDR mode on devices that meet the required specifications.
- Best Photos. Enable to find best photos within an album.

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.
Import photos - You can import photos from Camera Roll or Gallery. You can also import photos from files or directly from a DSLR camera. You can further set up albums and folders, and organize your photos in order by applying ratings or flags.
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.

Note:

To learn how to work with Lightroom on your iPad or iPhone, see Get started with Lightroom for mobile (iOS).

Get started with Lightroom for mobile (Android)

Don't have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for mobile (Android)?

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

Get to know the workspace

Library view

All Photos view (all Lightroom photos)