Unable to open photo from Lightroom Classic v14 into Photoshop 2025

[adann]

I am unable to open a photo from Lightroom Classic v14 into Photoshop 2025.  When I use Photo > Edit In (which is not greyed out), all the options are greyed out.  This happens even though the External Edit preference is set to Photoshop 2025.

I have uninstalled both programs and then reinstalled with Photoshop installed first.

No luck with that solution.

Suggestions would be welcome.

My setup:

MacOS 14.6.1

Lightroom Classic v 14.0

Photoshop 2025, v 26.0.0

[arjunhaarith]

I hope you are not working on a smart preview (with original missing)?

[JohanElzenga]

(Correction of a previous reply)

The main 'Edit in' menu is never greyed out. If all the submenus are, then indeed the original images are probably missing. You can't send a smart preview to Photoshop.

[rob-sylvan]

I had a similar issue after updating to LrC 14.0 and Ps 26.0, except that no version of Ps was showing in LrC preferences for external editor. I did uninstall and reinstall Ps, which usually works, but that did not restore Ps to the LrC preferences, so I uninstalled/reinstalled LrC and that did not restore Ps to the preferences either, so then I reset LrC preferences, and that did the trick. It does reset a bunch of other things back to default, which is a pain, but I can now send copies to Ps for editing. In case it helps you, here's how to reset preferences:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/reset-preferences.html

[adann]

@rjarjarja and @rob-sylvan   Thanks for your helpful answers.   With some help from @johanelzenga I found that my problem only applied to a couple of photos.  One was synced from my phone and the other was imported from my hard drive.  Neither was missing.  Neither had a smart preview associated with it – I don't apply smart previews on Import and did not create them after they were added to LRC).

I have checked several other photos across my catalog and none exhibit the greyed out "Edit In" menu phenomenon.

I don't have an explanation for what's going on but given how limited it is, I think I will pass on further investigation.

Again, thanks to you all for your help.

Alec 

[saitejagopi2894]

@adann @rob-sylvan  Thanks for reporting.

Here are a few reasons why the “Edit In” option might be greyed out:

1. The original images are missing.
2. Photoshop (PS) is not installed on the machine.
3. Photoshop is installed, but it doesn’t appear in the Preferences -> External Editing tab -> Photoshop version dropdown.

Assuming reasons #1 and #2 are not the issue in this case, for reason #3, we recommend the following:

• Open Photoshop at least once after installation if it is not present in the dropdown. On macOS, the full installation may complete only after you open the app for the first time.

Please let us know if this resolves your issue.

Best regards,
Gopi

[rob-sylvan]

Hi Gopi, Thanks for following up! The photos weren't missing. Photoshop was installed (this was after updating to both the new version of Ps and LrC), but nothing appeared in the preferences. Reinstalling, then opening Photoshop did not help. Ultimately, what seemed to work was resetting LrC's preferences back to default. 

[adann · Accepted solution]

@saitejagopi2894 Thanks, Gopi

In my case, the images were not missing, Photoshop 2025 was installed and, though I did not at one point that the External Editing preference was not set properly, correcting that did not help.  Reinstalling both applications didn't help either.  All that said, it turned out that only two images (out of 100,000) showed this problem and both were throwaway test images from a teaching exercise.

So from a what-next perspective, I don't think this issue is worth further investigation.

Thanks very much for your help, however.