How install beta and have access to both Photoshop versions from LR Classic?

[Bazsl]

I installed the PS beta. After installation PS beta was not listed in the list of External Editors in LR Classic. I uninstalled PS beta and then had no version of PS shown in the External Editors drop-down. The list was empty. After uninstalling and reinstalling both LR & PS I now see PS 2024 in the External Editors list and everything works.

Is there a way to install the PS beta on Windows 11 and have both PS 2024 and the PS beta appear in the External Editors drop-down in LR Classic so I can use both? Thanks.

[Rob_Cullen]

I will have a guess at this- and let us know if it works:

Add Ps Beta as an 'Additional External Editor'.

You won't open Ps Beta by [Ctrl/Cmd +E]  but it would appear from the [Right Click > Edit In] or [Menu: Photo > Edit In...]

Add external editors to Lightroom Classic?

TBMK the Default 'Photoshop' that opens from [Ctrl/Cmd + E] is the version that was 'last installed'.

[Bazsl]

Without getting into details, you suggestion did not work. I have wasted most of a day of my life that I will never get back uninstalling both versions of PS and LR in various orders including installing LR and PS beta only and I can not open a photo from LR in PS beta in any of the installation orders I have tried. I will never try to intall PS beta again. Thanks for your susggestion even though it did not work.

[David Ayars · Accepted solution]

Bazsl, you're right. The advice you got works in Mac but not Windows. Also having wasted time on this, I feel your pain. If you want to try one more time, it will only take a few minutes, and the following will either work or not for you. You'll have to go back to the Creative Cloud app and install beta Photoshop again.

Here's the deal: in MacOS, you can easily choose which installed version of Photoshop (PS), whether regular, beta, or an older version of PS you want to use from Edit In in Lightroom Classic (LrC)... at least after changing the External Editor Settings. This is what you see demonstrated in some YouTube videos and help advice online. They're using MacOS.

But after you download and install the beta version of PS in Windows, at least as of April 2024, if you use the Edit In command in LrC, you get no choice of PS version, you can't change it in LrC's External Editor Preferences, and the file opens in regular, not beta, PS. So how do you use beta PS from LrC in Windows??

You have to do a workaround one time only. In Windows open the Adobe Creative Cloud app. Go back to the Beta tab where you installed the beta version of PS. Once Beta PS is installed, the "Install" button says "Open" instead. Click "Open" for Beta PS in the Adobe Creative Cloud app. Beta PS opens. Leave beta PS open. Also open LrC for Windows, choose a file, right-click and choose Edit In > Adobe Photoshop. The image will open in beta PS. It may just say "Adobe Photoshop" with no mention of "(Beta)" from the Edit In choices or in External Editor Preferences, but it should open in beta PS. You can verify that it did by clicking in PS: Help > About Photoshop and check out the version displayed there.

In future edits, after one success as above, you should not need to use the Adobe Creative Cloud app to open PS first. Just use Edit In from LrC for Windows as you did before, and it should open automatically in beta PS. If you want to go back to regular PS, as you may want to do once regular PS includes the beta features you want, just uninstall the beta version of PS from Windows, and only if needed because using it is not an option in LrC, open regular PS first in Adobe Creative Cloud, or if needed reinstall regular PS in Windows from the Adobe Creative Cloud app.

LrC in MacOS handles this much better than LrC in Windows. Who knows why?? Not me.

[Bazsl]

Thanks, David. Your method not only works it works better than your message suggests. After following your procedure, close both PS and LRC. Launch the shipping version of PS from Creative Cloud, launch LRC and open a photo using either Ctrl+E or the Edit In menu. Now close both PS and LRC. From this point on always launch PS before you launch LRC and LRC will open photos in the running version of PS regardless of whether the running version of PS is the shipping version or the beta version. The secret is to always launch the version of PS that you want to use before you launch LRC. Thanks again for finding the secret sause to make using the beta easy.

Bill

[David Ayars]

Cool. I hadn't noticed that, though it makes sense in light of what I was saying about switching back.

Now I see that after Photoshop Beta is installed in Windows, both versions are listed at Windows' Start button  > Programs. So you probably don't need to use Adobe Creative Cloud to launch PS Beta the first time, or to switch versions; you can probably do it from the Start button (or desktop icons you create), then launch LrC and Edit In your chosen version of PS from there.

Thanks for the follow-up tip!

[richardplondon]

TO be clear, the suggestion for External Editor was not about the upper part of the dialog (where which PS version gets shown, seems to be somewhat dependent on circumstances). This upper part of the dialog relates to what the Ctrl+E shortcut will do.

But lower down, you can create an additional external editor preset. This allows persisting selection of any application version available - which does not need to be Photoshop - by browsing to that particular program executable, setting edit options, and supplying a name for this preset. So in this screenshot, selection of "photoshop.exe" could be for any PS version I want, as browsed to within that version's separate application folder.  

The interaction between LrC and an external editor (which may just be another way to get to PS, or to something other than PS) as invoked via preset works differently than when LrC interacts with PS under the standard Ctrl+E method.

With the preset involved, LrC renders and saves a new file to disk immediately, and only then tells the external application to start up (with this new file open, ready for any potential changes which could then be re-saved).

This is by contrast with the standard interaction whereby LrC hands PS the job of rendering the file (just in memory, initially) - and then you subsequently either tell PS itself to save the new file to disk, or else cancel out without anything being created on disk.

Are you saying you were unsuccessful at creating any new external editing preset referring to the PS Beta's program  executable - or perhaps, unsuccessful at invoking such a preset instead of the more usual Ctrl+E method?

[Bill Sprague]

My experience is simple.  On Windows, the most recent Photoshop installed is the one that Lightroom Classic opens.  After installing the Beta version, I uninstall and reinstall the released version.  Then, if I want to use the Beta, I can open it before I do a Lightroom Classic "Edit In".  

It is not "the best", but it works.  The installs work in the background, so I do it when I'm busy with something else.

[richardplondon]

In some circumstances the external editor preset is useful for other reasons too. For example: I usually send camera Raw to PS with my standard settings for colourspace and bitmap, but occasionally want to use other settings - usually when I am editing from camera JPG with different expectations such that 16-bit and ProPhoto can then be dispensed with - and having that working option as a front-end alternative right within LrC, saves time overall.

As a spinoff from this, one can also configure a given preset to always access a chosen Beta instead of whichever LrC considers the current primary version of PS. So no other manoeuvres are then necessary.

[Lumigraphics]

Mixing the beta and release versions of Photoshop seems to work on the Mac but not Windows. The betas are for testing, not production, and with a beta release you can have all sorts of problems. You should expect things to break.