Develop for Lightroom CC — Setup guide
What you need
- A Stream Deck + (the model with dials and a touch strip) and the Stream Deck app 6.9 or later.
- macOS 13 or later.
- Adobe Lightroom (cloud), installed from Creative Cloud or from the Mac App Store. Lightroom Classic is a different application and is not supported.
1 · Enable external controllers in Lightroom
- Open Lightroom and go to Lightroom › Preferences › Interface.
- Turn on Enable external controllers.
- Quit and reopen Lightroom. Lightroom only opens the controller connection when it starts.
2 · Install the plugin and allow the connection
- Install Develop for Lightroom CC from the Elgato Marketplace (or double-click the
.streamDeckPluginfile). - Lightroom shows a Pairing request dialog: "Develop for Lightroom CC" would like to control Lightroom. Click Pair. It asks once.
- The first time a key sends a keystroke (see below), macOS asks to let Stream Deck control System Events. Allow it. Depending on your macOS version it may also ask for Accessibility for Stream Deck; allow that too. If you declined by mistake, turn Stream Deck on again in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation (and Accessibility).
3 · Put the profiles on the Stream Deck +
The plugin comes with the same two Stream Deck + profiles in two languages:
| English | Spanish | |
|---|---|---|
| Develop console (16 pages) | Enfoke · Develop | Enfoke · Mesa |
| Culling | Enfoke · Culling | Enfoke · Selección |
When the plugin is installed, Stream Deck asks whether to install its profiles: click Install Profile(s). All four appear in the profile menu of the Stream Deck app; pick the pair in your language. The Culling and Develop keys (Selección and Revelado in Spanish) jump from one to the other, always within the same language.
Once you are on them, the deck follows Lightroom: pick the crop, masking or remove tool in Lightroom and the deck jumps to that tool's page of the develop console in the language you are using, and back when you leave the tool — unless you used the deck on that page: then it stays where you are. It only does so while the deck shows one of these profiles: on any other profile it stays where you put it. That automatic following can be turned off from the settings of any Develop dial, Lightroom command or Lightroom dial (Follow the Lightroom tool).
The words the plugin itself puts on the deck (the photo dial, the strip messages below, decimal commas) follow the profile's language. The action names and their settings in the Stream Deck app follow the language of the Stream Deck app (English or Spanish).
What the strip tells you
When something is missing, the first row of a develop dial says so:
| Strip says | Meaning |
|---|---|
| No LR | Lightroom is not running. |
| Ctrl. off | Lightroom runs but external controllers are off (step 1), or it was not restarted after enabling them. For a few seconds while Lightroom starts, or after the connection drops with Lightroom open, this is normal; if it does not go away, quit and reopen Lightroom. |
| Allow LR | Lightroom is showing its pairing request (step 2): click Pair there. If Lightroom shows no request, quit and reopen Lightroom. |
| Denied | The pairing request was declined in Lightroom. The plugin does not ask again on its own: press any dial of the deck or tap its touch strip (turning a dial is not enough), or reopen Lightroom, and Lightroom asks again. The page keys of the profiles don't count: they belong to the Stream Deck app. |
| Offline | Only for a moment while the plugin starts, before its first try. |
(The messages are short because they share the strip with the dial's own label.)
Building your own keys
Any key or dial can be configured from the Stream Deck app:
- Develop dial — up to three Lightroom parameters per dial, picked from a list that comes from your own Lightroom. Turn to adjust, turn while pressed for fine steps, press to reset.
- Lightroom command — a key that sends one Lightroom command (crop, a mask, export…) and, optionally, reads a Lightroom state to show on/off.
- Lightroom dial — a dial that sends one command when turned left, one when turned right and one when pressed (zoom, undo/redo, flags…).
- Photo dial — moves between photos and shows the photo on the strip.
A note on keyboard shortcuts
Almost everything goes through Lightroom's controller interface, so it does not depend on your keyboard layout. A handful of Lightroom commands have no controller equivalent (show original, paste settings to all selected, panels, targeted adjustment tools). Those keys press Lightroom's own shortcut instead, typed by character. Lightroom uses the same shortcuts for them in every language it ships in, except show original, which differs in German and French: the plugin asks Lightroom which language it runs in and sends the right one. These keys were tested with Lightroom in Spanish on a Spanish keyboard; the English profiles send the same characters. If one of them shows a warning triangle, macOS has not given Stream Deck the permission of step 2.
Support
Questions or problems: [email protected].