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How to set up PhotosPublish, publish your first collection, keep it in sync, and bring along the photos you exported to Photos before.

1. The apps and words used here

• Lightroom Classic: Adobe's desktop photo editor with a catalog (not the newer app called just “Lightroom”).
• Photos: Apple's Photos app on your Mac. With iCloud Photos on, its library appears on your iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
• Publish service: Lightroom Classic's way of keeping a set of photos in sync with somewhere else. PhotosPublish adds one called Apple Photos.
• Collection and smart collection: Lightroom Classic groups of photos; a smart collection fills itself from rules, such as “5 stars and keyword Ana”.
• PhotosPublish Helper: a small app inside the plug-in that does the work in Photos. It has no window; you only see it in System Settings.

2. Install

Get PhotosPublish from Adobe Exchange; the Creative Cloud app installs it. Quit Lightroom Classic during the install, then open it again. You'll find Apple Photos in the Library module's Publish Services panel, and a PhotosPublish section in File › Plug-in Manager.

3. Allow access to Photos (once)

The first time you publish, macOS asks two questions about PhotosPublish Helper. Allow both:

1. Access to your Photos library — choose Allow Full Access. It's needed to add, update and organise photos.
2. Control of the Photos app — choose Allow. It's how keywords, titles and captions are read and set (Apple offers no other way).

If you said no by mistake: System Settings › Privacy & Security › Photos › turn on PhotosPublish Helper, and Privacy & Security › Automation › PhotosPublish Helper › turn on Photos. In Lightroom Classic, File › Plug-in Manager › PhotosPublish › Test Photos Access shows whether it's working.

4. Back up first

PhotosPublish changes both your Photos library and your Lightroom Classic catalog. Before your first publish, and especially before a migration:

• Catalog: Lightroom Classic › Catalog Settings… › General › Back up catalog (choose “Next time Lightroom exits”), or copy your catalog file.
• Photos library: a Time Machine backup, or a copy of the library (Pictures › Photos Library) on another drive. With iCloud Photos, also make sure your Mac has finished syncing.

5. Set up the Apple Photos service

In the Library module, Publish Services panel, click Set Up… next to Apple Photos. The defaults are made for screens; you can keep them.

• Folder in Photos (default “Lightroom”): each collection becomes an album in this folder.
• File settings: JPEG, quality 90, Display P3. For HDR photos edited in Lightroom Classic's HDR mode, turn on HDR Output: Apple devices show them in HDR.
• Convert photos to HEIC: about half the size of JPEG. For the best result choose TIFF, 16 bits/component (TIFF is always converted to HEIC).
• Image sizing: 6000 pixels on the long side, never enlarged — sharp on a 4K TV and a 5K display, a fraction of a full-size file.
• Videos: MP4 with H.264 plays everywhere; HEVC is about half the size. Both go up to 4K.
• Favorite in Photos: syncs with Lightroom Classic's Pick flag, or doesn't sync.

The settings apply to every collection of the service. For different settings, add a second Apple Photos service; each has its own copy of a photo in Photos.

6. Add collections and publish

1. Right-click Apple Photos in the Publish Services panel › Create Published Smart Collection… (or Create Published Collection…, then drag photos onto it).
2. Select the collection and click Publish.

The first publish of a large collection takes a while: Lightroom Classic renders every photo, and AI masks, Lens Blur and Denoise make that slower. Turning on Use GPU for export in Lightroom Classic › Settings › Performance helps. Later publishes only send new or re-edited photos.

A photo in several collections is exported once and appears in each album. If you delete a published photo in Photos, Check Photos for Changes notices it and the next Publish adds it back (see step 8).

7. What happens when you re-edit

• Changed the look (Develop, crop, rotation): the photo is re-exported and replaces the same photo in Photos, which keeps its albums and Favorite. Photos keeps your first published version as the “original” (Revert to Original in Photos brings it back).
• Changed only keywords, title, caption or location: no new file is sent to Photos; only that information is updated.
• Edits made in Photos to a published photo (crop, filters) are replaced the next time you re-edit it in Lightroom Classic. Lightroom Classic is the master.

Shared Albums: a Shared Album keeps its own copy of a photo. Updates don't reach people you shared with; to share the new version, remove the photo from the Shared Album and add it again.

8. Keywords, titles, captions and Favorite, both ways

Change a keyword, title or caption in Photos (on any device), or Favorite a photo (when Favorite in Photos syncs with the Pick flag), and PhotosPublish brings it into Lightroom Classic. Changes in Lightroom Classic go to Photos. If both sides changed the same title or caption, Lightroom Classic's wins; keywords added on either side are kept.

1. Library › Plug-in Extras › PhotosPublish: Check Photos for Changes… looks for changes made in Photos, and Pick flag changes in Lightroom Classic, and marks those photos to re-publish.
2. Click Publish to sync them. Nothing changes until you do.

Keywords new to Lightroom Classic are created under a keyword called From Photos, so you can file them later. Locations go one way: from Lightroom Classic to Photos.

9. Removing photos and collections

• A photo that leaves a collection (removed, or no longer matching a smart collection) leaves that album when you publish. If it's in no collection any more, it goes to the Removed from Lightroom album; delete it there yourself when you're sure.
• Deleting a collection removes its photos from the album the same way, and deletes the album if PhotosPublish created it. PhotosPublish never deletes an album you made yourself, or the folder.

10. Bring along photos you exported before

If you exported photos from Lightroom Classic to Photos by hand before, Library › Plug-in Extras › PhotosPublish: Migrate Earlier Exports… finds them, so publishing doesn't create duplicates. Set up your collections first.

1. It looks for photos in Photos with the same file name and the same capture time (allowing for time zones). It never uses photos in Shared Albums.
2. A preview shows what it found. Nothing changes yet.
3. Keywords, titles, captions and Favorites from the earlier copies are copied into Lightroom Classic.
4. When you publish, new versions are added and the earlier copies go to Recently Deleted — macOS asks you to confirm, and they stay there for 30 days.

• Edited in Photos (crops, adjustments): kept as they are and linked, by default — your Photos edits stay until you next re-edit the photo in Lightroom Classic.
• Left out: photos whose earlier copies have different titles or captions, or can't be read. Tidy them up in Photos and run the migration again.
• Check your smart albums in Photos first: rules on keywords, titles, dates, camera or file name keep working; rules on file type, Photos edits or People may not match the new versions.

11. Videos

Videos are published as MP4 (H.264, or HEVC if you choose), up to 3840×2160, with their capture date and location. Under Video in the service settings, choose H.264 at Max quality so the conversion starts from the best copy.

12. Troubleshooting

“No Photos access” or nothing happens when publishing

See step 3. Then File › Plug-in Manager › PhotosPublish › Test Photos Access.

Publishing is slow

Lightroom Classic's rendering takes almost all the time, especially with AI masks, Lens Blur or Denoise on large raw files. Turn on Use GPU for export; publish large collections once, then only changes go.

Thumbnails in Lightroom Classic look older than the edit

Those come from Lightroom Classic's preview cache. Select the photos and choose Library › Previews › Build Standard-Sized Previews.

“The metadata for this photo has been changed by both Lightroom and another application”

This is Lightroom Classic's own message about the metadata files next to your photos (XMP), not about PhotosPublish. Choose which version to keep; PhotosPublish publishes what Lightroom Classic has.

Photos stay in “Modified Photos to Re-Publish”

Publish again. If they stay, see the message PhotosPublish showed, or the log in ~/Library/Logs/Adobe/Lightroom/LrClassicLogs/PhotosPublish.log, and email us.

A photo I deleted in Photos came back

It's still in a published collection, so PhotosPublish adds it back when it's published again. Remove it from the collection in Lightroom Classic instead.

13. Tested with

MacBook Pro (Apple M4 Pro) · macOS 27.0.1 · Lightroom Classic 15.5 (catalog of about 193,000 photos) · Sony α1 raw files · Photos with iCloud Photos. Not yet tested: Intel Macs, macOS before 27, Lightroom Classic before 15.5.

14. Uninstall

Remove PhotosPublish in the Creative Cloud app (Stock & Marketplace › Plugins), or in File › Plug-in Manager. Your photos and albums in Photos stay. Optional clean-up: delete ~/Library/Application Support/PhotosPublish, and remove PhotosPublish Helper from System Settings › Privacy & Security › Photos and Automation.