Boost your photo editing skills with Lightroom’s Discover section
Image credit: Katrin Eismann.
Adobe Lightroom empowers you to create beautiful photos and express your vision — but our mission goes even deeper than that. Lightroom also helps you become a better photographer, sharpen your skills, and connect with a vibrant community. That's why we've been working hard to offer you more tools and resources — all right within the app.
In this article
- Learn from other photographers
- Explore Recommended Presets
- Search and filter photos in the Lightroom community
- Submit your own photos to Discover
- Discover a new world of photography
Below we highlight practical features — such as Discover Edits, downloading presets, and Remix — that you can use to learn from fellow photographers. We’ll also look at how you can give community members the opportunity to get inspired by your own images, and hear from a few expert Discover users along the way.
“I enjoy the feedback and increased exposure I get from posting my favorite images to Adobe Discover. It’s a great opportunity to share my work with people from around the world.”
– Alex MacPhee, photographer
Learn from other photographers
Lightroom comes with several features that help you learn directly within the application, get inspired by the work of top photographers, and understand how you can improve your own photos.
Discover Edits
The Discover section enables you to view each Lightroom processing step a photographer applied to their image.
Click the play button on an edited photo to browse through the edits one by one, and find out how the photographer went from original capture to final image. You can also use the Edits tab on the right for a list of all the applied edits and select specific ones to see how the image is changing, while the Info tab gives you information about the file type and metadata.
“I've been motivated to produce more frequently as a result of the Discover Edit tool because it has allowed me to share my creative process and works with others who I know would find inspiration in them.”
– Ebuka Mordi, photographer
Save, apply, and adjust presets for free
The Discover section in Lightroom contains hundreds of thousands of shared edits that contain freely downloadable presets. If you like a particular photographer’s edits and they’ve enabled the option, you can download and save the settings as presets to apply to your own photos.
To do so, simply click on the “Save as Preset” button on the right side of the panel above the Discover Edits settings, or hover to an image thumbnail on the Discover feed and click on the shortcut.
The preset will be saved to your “Presets” panel under the “Yours” tab in the editor in “Saved from Discover.”
“If I find an edit that I think I would want to try out on one of my images, I download and save it as a Preset for free! I like to think of Presets as recipes for the Edit sliders in Lightroom. I'll apply the downloaded preset and use it as a good jumping-off point for my edit.”
–Jaime Cody, photographer
Explore Recommended Presets
Recommended Presets are sourced from the Lightroom community. Using machine learning developed by Adobe, Recommended Presets shows you how photographers processed similar images to yours and allows you to see how that processing would look on your own images.
Apply Recommended Presets via the editor “Presets” panel under the “Recommended” tab and click “more like this” to get more similar preset suggestions.
Please note that the “Recommended Presets” feature is currently only available to paying Lightroom subscribers on desktop, mobile (iOS and Android), and web.
Search and filter photos in the Lightroom community
To find just the right content in the Discover section, you can now search for specific topics and photographers in the search bar and filter your results based on subject matter, post remixability (see below to learn about Remixes), and preset availability.
Turn on the toggle in the Discover section’s filter option if you only want to see photos that you can try to edit. Similarly, turn on the “Preset downloadable” toggle if you want to see presets that can be saved, and use the drop-down menu to select the subject matter of your choice.
Find inspiration in the “Featured” feed
The “Featured” feed is curated by members of the Lightroom team with years of photographic and visual experience.
The feed is made up of a constantly updated mix of images and edits from the community that offer an inspiring learning opportunity.
“Just scrolling through the featured feed pushed me to develop a specific photographic style. Having my images highlighted on the Featured feed has also greatly empowered me.”
Get a personalized feed
The “For You” tab in the Discover section displays recommended edits, guided tutorials, and interactive edits tailored to your own preferences.
The suggestions in this feed are based on your recent editing and search history, likes, and the people you follow in the Lightroom community.
Submit your own photos to Discover
There are various ways you can share your own work to the Discover section, too — either as remixes of other people’s images or your best edited photos.
Share your best edits
Everyone can share their best edited photos to the Discover section to inspire and connect with other photographers.
Click on "All Photos" in the left navigation panel, and select a photo with at least three edits, click the “Share” icon in the upper-right corner and then select “Share Edit”.
Now enter the title and description for your post. Make sure that the "Save as Preset" option is active, which allows others to save your edits as a preset. You can also include the location info, and under “Categories” choose at least one option that reflects the subject matter of the image that you’re about to post.
“Because of my workflow, and because I consider editing a creative expression, sometimes my edited images look very different compared to the raw file. That is why this feature comes in handy, so they can see the actual adjustments. In addition to that, the brief description allows me to explain how and why I processed the image to look a certain way.”
To see how other community members would edit your work, turn on the “Allow Remixing” toggle, and be inspired by how other artists interpret your image. To edit the copyright, change the name in your profile, and then click “Share”: Your image will be submitted, and you'll receive a sharable link to invite others to view and remix it. All of your shared edits can be viewed in the “Edits” tab of your profile and will show up in the Discover feed.
Create Remixes
Remixes give you a chance to put your own spin on other community members' images, and also to allow others to explore and experiment with your images. Here's how it works: anyone who submits a Discover Edit can opt in and allow others to "remix" their image — other community members can then edit the image in their own way. The original photographer always retains full ownership of the image, the original is fully preserved, and these Remixes can't be exported, so it's an exciting way to experiment and evolve your photo editing skills that’s contained within the Lightroom app itself.
Everyone can remix photos on both desktop and mobile, whether they are free users or paid subscribers. Currently, only paid subscribers can opt in to allow their photos to be edited.
“I ‘Enable Remixing’ on all the photos I post to Adobe Discover. It’s fascinating to see how my images get edited. Some people aim to recreate what I’ve done, while others go in entirely different and interesting directions.”
Select the “Remixes” tab in the Discover section, and explore the images under the categories “Following”, “Just Remixed”, and “All Remixables”. Once you’ve found a photo that you’d like to remix, hover over the thumbnail and click “Remix”.
Then, edit the photo in your own style, click “Next”, add a comment about your editing process, and click “Post Remix” for everyone to see your edits. All remixes will appear in the “Remixes” tab of a user’s profile and the “Remixes” feed.
When I want to expand my creative editing muscle, I spend some time remixing other people’s photos. This feature is extremely useful and fun; I’ve shared photos with my students so that they can apply the concepts they’ve learned in my courses. It’s amazing to see what they can do!
Take part in the “Remix it!” challenge
On the first Friday of every month, the Lightroom Community team features an image for you to remix with your own interpretation and style.
The team then chooses the best remix and features it in the Lightroom Community Newsletter. To participate and see the latest challenge, check out this post.
Discover a new world of photography
The Adobe Lightroom team is constantly improving the way you — our valued community — can learn from and inspire each other to create better photography. The Discover section, right within the app, is full of features to empower you to grow your skills and make our community stronger every day. Adobe MAX is just around the corner, so stay tuned for more enhancements.