In the Albums panel, you can create albums to organize your photos. In the column on the left, you can choose a source of photos to view–All Photos, Recently Added photos, or photos By Date.Everything is accessible from one screen in Lightroom’s streamlined interface.

If you edit a photo or make changes to its metadata in Lightroom, those changes also sync across the ecosystem. The photos sync through the cloud to all your devices in the Lightroom ecosystem.

Lightroom automatically copies the originals and uploads them to the Cloud at full resolution.

Click Add Photos at the top right of the preview screen to finish adding photos to your library.

If you’re working with the sample files, this will make it easier to access these files later. At the top of the preview screen, click to the right of Add to Album and choose New.

You have the option to include photos in a new or existing album during import.

If you’re using the sample files for this tutorial, leave all the previews checked. On the next screen of photo previews, you can uncheck any photos you don’t want to add to your photo library.

Click Review for Import (MacOS) or Choose Folder (Windows).

Note: If a camera or camera memory card is attached to your computer, you’ll see options to choose a camera device from which to add photos or browse to photos on an internal or external drive.

In the Finder (MacOS) or File Explorer (Windows) that opens, navigate to a folder of photos or individual photos on your computer or external drive, like the unzipped folder of sample files you downloaded from this page.

In Lightroom, click Add Photos (the plus icon) at the top left of the workspace.

This lesson focuses on adding the sample files for this tutorial using the Lightroom desktop app.

You can add photos or videos to your photo library from the desktop, a mobile device, or the web. What you learned: Add photos to your photo library

Lightroom tutorials for beginners