How can I create a shortcut or action to save as JPG

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
August 9, 2022
2 replies
1970 views

I use Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CS6. When I press Ctrl-E in Lightroom and choose "edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments" there is no format option (I selected TIF rather than PSD when setting up the external editor). And the problem is that when I want to save in Photoshop the default is TIF not JPG so each time I have to select JPG.

So my question is how can I create an action in PS or set up a shortcut which will make JPG the default. The problem is that I need to save many versions of each photo so I don't want an action that will overwrite with the same name. Ideally the action would stop at the point where I can still edit the filename (so just before pressing "Save") but when I tried this I could not stop recording the action at this point.

Windows

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Earth Oliver

Legend

A gentle reminder that 6 or 7 years after its introduction, Export As can still not be added as an Action.

Adobe, FIX THIS!

D Fosse

Community Expert

If the file is finished in Lightroom you can Export directly to jpeg there.

Jpeg can never be a Save default in Photoshop, because the jpeg format specification lacks support for almost anything you can do to a file in Photoshop. A jpeg will in all but a few special cases be a copy with discarded properties.

The jpeg format does not support 16 bit depth, layers of any kind, transparency, or alpha channels.

However, you can set up an action that saves a copy to jpeg. If you assign an F key it's just a single keystroke. But before you do, you need to decide what to do with the full original with all properties intact.

N

nickc7863073Author

Participant

Thank you D Fosse for this. But to be clear I am talking about the Save As command. When I used Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 5 I could opt to edit externally in Photoshop as JPG (for some reason Lightroom Classic CC doesn't give me a JPG option for external editing, only TIF or PSD). And then when I wanted to "Save As" from Photoshop the default format was always JPG. The problem is I need to save many versions of each photo I edit and now each time I go to Save As the default is TIF and I have to change it which is very tiresome. I tried setting up an action but it is impossible to stop recording the action until the file is saved ie after I have amended the filename. So I can have an action to save a copy as, say, xxxxV1.jpg but I need to save several versions of the same photo so I would need a separate action for xxxxV1.jpg, xxxxV2.jpg, xxxxV3.jpg etc. Perhaps I should explain that the photos are for various news sites which require different watermarks, dimensions, etc.

D Fosse

Community Expert

AFAIK jpeg was never an option under Lightroom "edit in Photoshop". And the argument is the same: it would throw away too much data. For one thing, 16 bit would be impossible.

You could and still can Export to jpeg and open that in Photoshop.

In Photoshop CS3, you couldn't save to jpeg at all, unless the file already complied with the jpeg spec: 8 bit, no layers, no transparency and no alpha channels. A "hack" was introduced in CS5, that allowed saving a jpeg copy directly from the Save dialog, but later changes in MacOS rendered that hack impossible so it had to be removed. (workarounds were introduced later).

Again, jpeg cannot possibly ever be the default format in Photoshop, for the reasons I've explained. I'm still not sure you understand what a limited file format jpeg is. The only exception to that is if the file already is a jpeg, with the limitations that implies, and you haven't done anything in Photoshop that violates the jpeg spec.

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