Today’s Question: When I work in a photo in Lightroom Classic and send it to Photoshop and then choose “Save As”, it doesn’t go to the original folder that I started out with. Instead, it sends me to Pictures and then I have to navigate back to my original folder. How do I remain in the same folder when sending photos from Lightroom to Photoshop?
Tim’s Quick Answer: For photos sent to Photoshop from Lightroom Classic you should be using the “Save” command rather than “Save As”. For photos opened directly in Photoshop you can also enable the “Save As to Original Folder” option in Preferences to ensure that when you use “Save As” the default destination will be the folder the current image was opened from.
More Detail: When you send a photo from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop, you should only use the “Save” command, not “Save As”. If you use “Save As” and change the folder location or filename the saved copy will not appear in your Lightroom Classic catalog. Instead, simply use the “Save” command. The file format and filename will have been specified by Lightroom Classic for you, with the folder being the same as the source image and the filename based on the settings established on the External Editing tab of the Preferences dialog.
If you’re working with an image that was opened directly in Photoshop rather than sent from Lightroom Classic, you can enable a setting that will cause the “Save As” command to default to the folder where the current image is saved. To enable this option, bring up the Preferences dialog by choosing Edit > Preferences > File Handling on Windows, or Photoshop > Settings > File Handling on Macintosh.
On the File Handling tab of the Preferences dialog turn on the “Save As to Original Folder” checkbox in the File Saving Options section at the top of the dialog. With that checkbox enabled, when you use the “Save As” command the default folder will be the same folder as the current image is stored in.
Enabling this checkbox will resolve the issue presented in today’s question when sending photos to Photoshop from Lightroom Classic. However, as noted above I don’t recommend using the “Save As” command when an image has been sent from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop because the saved copy will generally not be added to the Lightroom Classic catalog. Instead, simply use the Save command in this situation.
