Today’s Question: As a follow-up to your answer about not using Save As in Photoshop after sending a photo from Lightroom Classic, what if you want to save the image in a file format other than TIFF or PSD, such as a JPEG?
Tim’s Quick Answer: If you wanted to send a photo from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop and then create a JPEG copy, I recommend using the Export feature in Lightroom Classic. You can even add that JPEG back to the Lightroom Classic catalog as part of that feature if you’d like.
More Detail: Today’s question is a follow-up from yesterday on the subject of sending a photo from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop for editing. When sending a raw capture to Photoshop in this way, the only options are to generate a TIFF file or a Photoshop PSD file, based on the setting you’ve established on the External Editing tab of the Preferences dialog in Lightroom Classic.
As noted in yesterday’s answer, with this workflow you should always use the File > Save command, not Save As, before closing the file, in order to ensure the image is correctly added to your Lightroom Classic catalog. This prevents you from reliably creating a JPEG copy of the image as part of this workflow as far as having that JPEG included in the catalog automatically.
Instead, I recommend creating a JPEG copy using the Export command. You can select the image you want to export (such as the TIFF or PSD from Photoshop in this example) and then click the Export button at the bottom of the left panel in the Library module.
In the Export dialog you can specify that you want the new image to be added to the Lightroom Classic catalog by turning on the “Add to This Catalog” checkbox in the Export Location section of the dialog. You can also choose “Same folder as original photo” from the Export To popup if you want the JPEG copy to be saved in the same folder as the source image you’re exporting a copy of.
You can then otherwise configure the desired settings for the export within the Export dialog and click the Export button to complete the operation. As long as you had the “Add to This Catalog” checkbox turned on, the photo will be added to the Lightroom Classic catalog referenced in the folder location you specified in the Export Location section of the Export dialog.
