Lightroom Mobile on a Samsung Galaxy: Setup, RAW and Export

Although Lightroom mobile is available for free from Google Play and will work on most of the latest Galaxy phones, some of the features you’re likely to want, including raw editing and masking, are part of the Premium (paid for) version of the app according to Adobe, along with the healing brush and cloud sync.

Here we’ll show you how to set it up for Expert RAW and Pro mode images, the best order to make adjustments in and how to use presets, before finishing up with exporting your images. Menu options for Lightroom for Android are taken from Adobe’s help pages, as at 5 November 2026.

What's free and what needs Premium

According to Adobe’s FAQ page, Lightroom’s photo capture and sharing tools are free, as are most of its editing tools. The table below lists those features that Galaxy owners may be most interested in.

Plans and prices

In the app (Menu > Premium Features), you can try Premium features free of charge or get a subscription that’ll renew either monthly or yearly. Be aware that, according to Adobe, subscribing to Lightroom on Google Play will enable Premium features on mobile only. Adobe doesn’t list Lightroom Premium’s price on its site, but you’ll see it (in your local currency) when you choose to upgrade.

On the web (as of November 2026), Adobe lists the Lightroom plan (US$11.99 a month on an annual plan, billed monthly), which also gets you Lightroom Classic and 1TB of cloud storage, at adobe.com. For US$19.99 a month, you can subscribe to Adobe’s Photography plan, which tacks on Photoshop. Both subscriptions come with a seven-day free trial.

If you’ve installed Lightroom via Galaxy Store, Premium subscriptions are charged by Samsung Checkout. To cancel a subscription purchased in Galaxy Store, proceed to Menu > My Page > Receipts > Items in Galaxy Store, where it’s listed as Lightroom for Samsung. After Premium subscription termination, syncing and Premium features are unavailable; other features will still work, Adobe clarifies.

Install and sign in

1. 1

   Check your phone

   Make sure your phone runs Android 8 or later and has a 64-bit processor and at least 4GB of RAM (8GB is recommended). To check your Android version, go to Settings > About phone > Software information. For editing photos and videos smoothly, Adobe suggests 128GB of storage space.

2. 2

   Install the app

   Install Lightroom from the Play Store. The app’s full name is Lightroom Photo Editor & Video and Adobe is the developer. Tap Install.

3. 3

   Sign in

   Launch Lightroom and sign in with your Adobe account (or create a free account, if prompted). If you use Lightroom on your computer, sign in with the same Adobe account so any plan you subscribe to will work on both devices.

4. 4

   Allow photo access

   Grant Lightroom permission to access photos on your phone, if prompted. Photos you take will appear under the Gallery tab, organised as they are on your phone (no need to import photos first).

5. 5

   Keep sync on Wi-Fi

   If you plan to shoot DNG files, open Menu > Preferences and deselect Use Cellular Data so Lightroom will sync over Wi-Fi only (DNG files are large and can eat up your data plan quickly).

Shoot RAW on the Galaxy first

Expert RAW will happily make both a (16-bit linear) DNG and a JPEG of any shot if you choose RAW+JPEG from the format pull-down menu along the top (that menu was checked in Expert RAW 6.0.02.8 on a Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9, November 2026). Bear in mind that Lightroom can only do so much with an image, as it can only work with the data that your camera’s sensor and image processor recorded and saved. Our Expert RAW guide covers the rest of its controls.

You can also make DNG files with the regular Camera app, but only when shooting in Pro mode. To enable this, go to Camera settings > Photos > Photo format > Pro mode picture format (available on One UI 8.5 and One UI 9). The Expert RAW vs Pro mode comparison explains which file holds more editing room. A DNG file made with Expert RAW will look flat and a bit dull when you open it, and that’s normal because it’s a linear file. It’ll look better once you’ve applied a colour profile and some contrast.

Get Expert RAW and Pro mode files into Lightroom

1. 1

   Set a raw default

   Navigate to Menu > Preferences > Photo Import Options and choose your Raw Default (Adobe Default and Camera Settings are both fine; Choose Preset will apply one of your presets to all incoming DNGs).

2. 2

   Find the DNG files

   Browse to the folder where your camera saves images (via the Gallery tab) and you’ll see the DNGs right alongside the JPEGs that your camera also created. Just make sure you’re opening the right kind of file!

3. 3

   Select and import

   To select photos, touch and hold one photo, then tap other photos you want to import. When you're done, tap Import. You can import photos directly into an album by choosing Import & add to Lightroom album. Or you can import photos to Lightroom and add them to an album later by choosing Import into Lightroom.

4. 4

   Let Lightroom add new shots for you

   If you have a Premium subscription, go to Menu > Preferences > Enable Auto Add and check Auto add from device. In Import selected formats, check Raws and select the folders from your device that you want to monitor.

Adobe notes that Lightroom will try to find Camera Settings that match the camera that shot the DNG, but if it can’t find any it’ll fall back on Adobe Default settings. So it’s probably better to create your own presets for Galaxy DNGs so you have predictable starting points. Do this with a typical Galaxy DNG after using the panels below.

Edit a Galaxy DNG in this order

Lightroom doesn’t alter your original image, so this isn’t so much about getting the best quality as about being as time-efficient as possible (you don’t want to be editing the same bit twice!). Once you’ve tapped Edit on a photo in Lightroom, here’s the order in which we suggest you work through the panels, starting from the profile and working your way out!

1. 1

   Profile

   Select a profile. Start with Adobe Color (for raw files this will be under the Adobe Raw group of profiles) as this provides a neutral starting point. Adobe recommends applying any Adaptive profile first, before making any other changes.

2. 2

   White balance

   Set white balance. Use the white balance selector in the Color panel to sample a neutral area (for example a grey wall), or manually set Temp and Tint values. Raw images can cope with fairly extreme white balance shifts.

3. 3

   Light

   Set exposure. Adjust the Exposure slider and then recover detail in the highlights and shadows using the Highlights and Shadows sliders. Use a two-finger tap to display the histogram while adjusting the Blacks and Whites sliders.

4. 4

   Effects

   Adjust clarity. Introduce a little Texture and/or Clarity to enhance detail. Adobe recommends increasing Clarity until you start to see halos around edges and then backing off a little. Increase Dehaze to correct for haze.

5. 5

   Detail

   Remove noise and sharpen. If you're shooting at night you may want to introduce some Noise reduction and Color noise reduction, checking at 100% zoom. Save sharpening until last and check at 100% zoom too.

6. 6

   Optics

   Remove Chromatic Aberration. If you see coloured fringing around high-contrast edges, enable Remove Chromatic Aberration.

Masking the sky and the subject

On a phone, masking is probably the key feature worth paying for in Premium. With it, you can make adjustments like darkening a sky or brightening someone’s face, leaving the rest of the photo untouched. And since Lightroom saves masks as individual layers, you can revisit and modify them anytime.

1. 1

   Start a mask

   Tap Masking > Create new Mask. Select Sky makes an automatic mask of the sky, useful if there’s lots of stuff in the way such as trees or buildings.

2. 2

   Adjust only the masked area

   If the sky looks a bit blown out, use Light & Color options in a mask to lower Highlights or Exposure slightly, or add a touch of Dehaze.

3. 3

   Add the subject

   Tap Create new Mask again. Select Subject is handy for brightening or warming the subject just a touch to help it stand out from the background.

4. 4

   Refine by hand

   Use the Brush to add areas that you want to include in a mask (try increasing the Feather setting to soften the edge). Use the Eraser to remove areas again. Use a Linear Gradient mask to apply a graduated darkening effect to a bright foreground.

5. 5

   Target a colour or brightness

   Color Range and Luminance Range make masks based on similar colours or tones. The former is useful for selecting areas of similar colour such as green foliage, while the latter could be used to select street lights in a night scene, for example.

Presets for a consistent look

You’ll find built-in presets by tapping Presets in the Edit panel. Some of these, like Adobe’s Adaptive and Portraits groups, are available only with Premium. Tap a preset thumbnail a second time to display an Amount slider you can use to dial back presets that are a bit too strong for your taste. Presets in Adobe’s Recommended group are chosen specifically for the photo you’re working on.

To save your own presets, tap Presets, then tap the options menu and choose Create Preset. By default, Lightroom won’t include any adjustments you made using masks or in the Geometry panel when you create a preset. Adobe also recommends that you take the Light group off because lighting conditions, and therefore exposure settings, can vary greatly from photo to photo. To load presets you’ve created in other apps or downloaded from the web (in .lrtemplate, .dng or .xmp format), tap Presets, then tap the options menu and choose Import Presets. Note that you’ll need to uncompress (unzip) any downloaded presets before importing them into Lightroom; it can’t open ZIP files.

You can also copy the settings from one photo and paste them onto another (More > Copy Settings and Paste Settings). Adobe calls editing multiple photos at once with the same settings “batch editing” and lists it as a Premium feature.

Sync settings worth changing

• Menu > Account lets you check how much cloud storage you’re using. Once you hit your limit, Adobe says it’ll leave new photos on your phone instead of uploading them.
• If you import a bunch of DNG files when you’re away from Wi-Fi, you may want to turn off Menu > Preferences > Use Cellular Data. This setting makes sure photos only sync when your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network.
• If you mainly share photos on social media, choose Download only reduced-resolution under Image quality. This saves space on your phone, since Adobe only downloads smaller versions of your photos.
• If you edit photos for print, Adobe recommends Download original files when using AI tools, so the app downloads full-size versions of your photos.
• You can sync photos between Lightroom on your phone and Lightroom on your computer, but you need a Creative Cloud plan. The Premium plan from Google Play doesn’t let you do this.

Export settings for Instagram and prints

Tap Share > Export as and select a File Type, Dimensions and Quality, then tap the tick to confirm. Android provides JPG and AVIF file types for sharing, TIF for use in print and DNG or Original to retain the raw data. You can export images at their Largest Available size, Small (2048 px) or specify a Custom size (long side up to 15,000 px).

The maximum image size Instagram accepts depends on the aspect ratio (anything between 1.91:1 and 3:4). Instagram will downsize any image with a width greater than 1,080 pixels. So if you want to control how your images are downsized, export them from Lightroom with a width of 1,080 pixels.

For sharp prints, Adobe recommends using photos with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi). That means, for example, that a 12MP photo with a pixel dimension of 4,000 x 3,000 pixels can be printed at about 13 x 10 inches (at 300 ppi).

But there are other good editors worth considering on your Galaxy phone besides Lightroom. Our Lightroom vs Snapseed comparison sets it against the best free alternative, and the best photo editing apps for Android covers the rest. For apps across the whole workflow, from shooting to backup, see the best photography apps for Android.