Plug-in for Adobe Lightroom Classic · macOS

Your best Lightroom photos, in Apple Photos — and they stay up to date.

PhotosPublish is an add-on (plug-in) for Adobe Lightroom Classic on the Mac. It sends the collections you choose to Apple's Photos app on the same Mac, sized for screens, so they reach your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac through iCloud Photos. Re-edit a photo in Lightroom Classic, click Publish, and the same photo in Photos is updated: no duplicates, albums kept.

Why I made PhotosPublish

I edit everything in Lightroom Classic, but my family looks at photos in Apple Photos: on the TV, on their phones, on the iPad. For years I exported my favourites by hand, full size, into Photos. My α1's raw files are about 100 MB each, so those exports were huge, filled iCloud, and were out of date the moment I changed an edit. Re-exporting meant duplicates, and keeping keywords in step was hopeless.

PhotosPublish makes that a Lightroom Classic publish service. I make smart collections, say five-star photos of each person in the family, and each one becomes an album in Photos. The photos are exported once, at a size made for screens (6000 pixels on the long side, Display P3), and when I change an edit, the photo in Photos is replaced in place. Keywords, titles and captions go both ways, so tagging on the iPhone isn't lost either.

It works for me. I hope it works for you too.

— Gonzalo, GL-Solutions.AI

How it works

1. Set up the Apple Photos serviceIn Lightroom Classic's Publish Services panel. The defaults are made for screens; change them if you like.
2. Add collectionsOrdinary or smart collections. Each one becomes an album in a “Lightroom” folder in Photos.
3. Click PublishNew photos are added, re-edited ones updated in place, removed ones moved to a “Removed from Lightroom” album.
4. Edit anywhere, sync when you chooseKeyword a photo on your iPhone; “Check Photos for Changes” queues it, and the next Publish brings it into Lightroom Classic.

What you get

• Albums from collections — one album per collection, smart collections included. A photo in several collections is one photo in Photos, in several albums.
• Sized for screens — JPEG in Display P3, 6000 pixels on the long side by default, a fraction of a full-size export. Optional HEIC (about half the size again) and HDR (Lightroom Classic's HDR Output).
• Updated in place — re-edit in Lightroom Classic and the same photo in Photos changes. Its albums and Favorite stay. (Shared Albums keep the copy they were given — see why.)
• Two-way metadata — keywords, titles, captions and Favorite (with the Pick flag) sync both ways; locations go from Lightroom Classic to Photos.
• Videos too — as MP4 (H.264, or HEVC), up to 4K, with their date and location.
• Bring your earlier exports along — a one-time migration finds photos you exported to Photos by hand before and replaces them with the new versions; photos you edited in Photos are kept and linked.

Requirements

• A Mac with macOS 14 or later and Adobe Lightroom Classic 15 or later (the desktop app, not the newer app called just “Lightroom”).
• Apple's Photos app on the same Mac; iCloud Photos turned on if you want your photos on your other devices.
• Two one-time permissions for the small helper app that comes with PhotosPublish: access to your Photos library, and to control Photos (for keywords, titles and captions). macOS asks the first time — see the steps.

Tested on macOS 27 and Lightroom Classic 15.5 — full details.

Mac only — PhotosPublish doesn't run on Windows. Everything happens on your Mac; nothing is sent to us — privacy.