LrC-AVG — Lightroom Classic Autonomous Vision Gateway

LrC-AVG lets Claude, in Claude Desktop, edit a photo in Lightroom Classic, raw or JPEG or any other format Lightroom develops (see Supported formats), the way a photographer does: set a few Develop sliders, look at the result, measure it, adjust again, up to a capped number of passes. It uses only Lightroom's own Develop settings, so every change shows on the sliders, sits in History as a named step, and can be undone. A local engine measures each render (clipping, histogram, pass-to-pass changes) and keeps every pass within clipping limits; Claude's vision makes the aesthetic calls.

It comes in two halves: a Lightroom plugin, and an engine that Claude Desktop starts as an MCP server.

Prototype: there is no release yet. The Install section below describes the planned 1.0.0 release; its download links do not work yet. To run the prototype, build it from source as in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md. From Your first session on, this page describes the prototype as it is. Built and tested on one Windows 11 PC with Lightroom Classic 15.5.1 and 15.6. Where this page states how something behaves, the evidence is listed under Sources.

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11 (tested on Windows 11 only).

• Lightroom Classic 15.0 or later (see Supported Lightroom versions).

• Claude Desktop, signed in, and started at least once in this Windows account.

• Node.js 22 or newer, from https://nodejs.org. To check, run node --version in PowerShell.

• An internet connection for the install: npm downloads the engine's dependencies. LrC-AVG itself talks to Lightroom only on this computer (127.0.0.1).

Related MCP server: rawtherapee-mcp-server

Supported Lightroom versions

LrC-AVG supports Lightroom Classic 15.0 and later, and was tested on 15.6. Earlier versions may work but are untested. On a version older than 15.0 or newer than 15.6, nothing is blocked: the HUD says so once when an edit starts, and Claude sees the same notice when it reads the photo's details. If a newer Lightroom no longer offers a setting LrC-AVG uses, Claude is told which one is not available and the edit stays open. A photo on a process version newer than LrC-AVG knows can be described but not edited.

Supported formats

Lightroom develops every file through one of two pipelines: raw (camera raw files and raw DNGs) or rendered (JPEG, TIFF, PNG and the others below). LrC-AVG reads which one a photo uses from its Develop settings, not from its file name, so a .dng can be either. Both get the same sliders and intents. Two things differ:

• White balance: on a raw photo, temperature is in Kelvin; on a rendered photo, temperature and tint are relative, -100 to +100.

• Profiles: a raw photo takes the Adobe and camera-matching profiles; a rendered photo takes Color or Monochrome. Each intent names one of each.

Each format below was tested on one Windows 11 PC with Lightroom Classic 15.6. A full session means: the intent's starting settings, two passes, an exact revert, a sync onto another photo, and a preset made from it.

• Older photos: Lightroom's process versions 5 and 6 edit as they are. Four photos on version 5, raw and JPEG, were in the test. An older process version is refused; Claude says so.

• Between raw and rendered: a sync from a raw photo onto a JPEG (or back) copies everything except white balance and the profile, and says it left those two out.

• HDR photos (the 32-bit TIFF, the HDR AVIF) edit like the others, with exposure limited to ±5.

• Video is not supported: Lightroom does not develop it.

Install

Run the commands in PowerShell. They call npm.cmd and lrc-avg-setup.cmd rather than npm and lrc-avg-setup: on a new Windows account PowerShell refuses to run .ps1 scripts, and the plain names can resolve to the .ps1 versions.

1. Install the engine

npm.cmd install -g https://github.com/jimjohnbeebe-jpg/LrC_Autonomous_Gateway/releases/download/v1.0.0/lrc-avg-1.0.0.tgz

npm prints added … packages when it is done.

2. Add the engine to Claude Desktop

lrc-avg-setup.cmd

It finds Claude Desktop's config file, saves a backup next to it, adds an entry named lrc-avg, and reads the file back. Other entries in the file stay as they are. It prints:

Claude Desktop config: C:\Users\…\claude_desktop_config.json
MCP servers before: …
Done: add "lrc-avg" (backup of the old file: claude_desktop_config.json.backup-<time>).
MCP servers now: …, lrc-avg
"lrc-avg" runs: C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe …\lrc-avg\dist\mcp\main.js
Next: quit Claude Desktop (right-click the Claude icon in the Windows system tray > Quit), then start it again.

If Claude Desktop had no config file yet, the first line ends in (new file) and there is no backup. Do what the last line says. Running lrc-avg-setup.cmd a second time changes nothing: it prints Nothing to change.

3. Install the Lightroom plugin

Download the plugin and unpack it into %LOCALAPPDATA%\LrC-AVG\plugin:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing `
  -Uri https://github.com/jimjohnbeebe-jpg/LrC_Autonomous_Gateway/releases/download/v1.0.0/LrC-AVG.lrplugin-1.0.0.zip `
  -OutFile "$env:TEMP\LrC-AVG.lrplugin-1.0.0.zip"
Expand-Archive -Force `
  -LiteralPath "$env:TEMP\LrC-AVG.lrplugin-1.0.0.zip" `
  -DestinationPath "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\LrC-AVG\plugin"

Then, in Lightroom Classic:

1. Choose File > Plug-in Manager.

2. Click Add. In the folder dialog, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\LrC-AVG\plugin into the address bar and press Enter, select the LrC-AVG.lrplugin folder, and click Select Folder.

3. Check that LrC-AVG (Autonomous Vision Gateway) is in the list, then click Done.

4. Quit Lightroom (File > Exit) and start it again.

4. Check the connection

In Lightroom, choose File > Plug-in Extras > LrC-AVG - Bridge status. The dialog should read LrC-AVG bridge: RUNNING, engine NOT connected. That is the normal state outside a chat: the engine connects at Claude's first LrC-AVG tool call and lets go after a minute without one. During a chat it reads ENGINE CONNECTED.

If something goes wrong

• If lrc-avg-setup.cmd says Claude Desktop's folder was not found, start Claude Desktop once in this Windows account, quit it, then run the command again.

• If it says it found 2 Claude Desktop config files, it does not know which one Claude Desktop uses and has changed nothing. It lists both paths: run it again with the one your Claude Desktop uses, lrc-avg-setup.cmd --config "<that path>".

• If PowerShell says … cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system, you typed npm or lrc-avg-setup without .cmd. Type the command with .cmd.

• If Bridge status says NOT RUNNING, quit Lightroom and start it again, then choose the menu item again. The dialog also shows the path of the plugin's log.

• If Claude says the LrC-AVG tools are missing, quit Claude Desktop (right-click the Claude icon in the system tray > Quit) and start it again.

Your first session

1. In Lightroom, select one photo (in Library or Develop), raw or JPEG or any format in Supported formats.

2. In Claude Desktop, start a new chat and type: Tune the active photo for golden hour landscape.

3. If Claude Desktop asks whether LrC-AVG may use a tool, allow it.

What happens next:

• The engine saves a Develop snapshot of the photo, named AVG pre-session …. Aborting goes back to it.

• The HUD, a small floating window, opens in Lightroom and follows the session (below).

• Your words come first. Claude starts from an intent (a set of starting values, below) only when one fits what you asked for, and leaves it when you ask for something else; with no intent, pass 0 changes nothing but clipping.

• Pass 0 sets the intent's camera profile, lens corrections and starting values. Claude then makes up to 4 more passes (the Max passes setting). Before each pass it looks at a fresh render and the engine's measurements. Each pass is one History step, named AVG <id> pass n/N.

• The engine caps how far each slider moves per pass, and keeps clipping within limits: by default at most 0.5 % of pixels blown out and 1.0 % crushed to black.

• The session ends when Claude accepts the edit, or when you click Accept or Abort in the HUD.

Claude Desktop shows the renders Claude looks at only inside the tool-call boxes in the chat: click a box to expand it. The photo in Lightroom shows the same edit.

What else you can ask

• Other looks. Eleven intents come with the engine: Black and white; Landscape — blue hour, forest shade, golden hour, midday high contrast, overcast flat light; Neutral technical correction; Night — stars and Milky Way; Pet — fur detail; Portrait — natural light, skin first. Ask "Which intents are there?" to see them, with your own.

• Variants. "Make three golden-hour variants of this photo." The engine makes virtual copies AVG <intent> A, B and C with different looks and shows them side by side. You pick one, with Pick A/B/C in the HUD or in the chat, and the remaining passes go to your pick. Select the original photo, not a virtual copy, before you ask. Every intent except Neutral technical correction has variants.

• Sync a burst. After a session you accepted: "Sync this edit to the selected photos." It copies the settings to the photos selected in Lightroom, up to 500. For a burst of the same scene, Claude can instead match each photo's brightness to the edited one. A request works for about 40 seconds; Claude then asks again for the photos left, until all are done. Each photo gets its own snapshot AVG pre-sync … first.

• Save a preset. "Save this photo's settings as a preset called …". It is saved in the group LrC-AVG, and Lightroom lists it after a restart.

• Save your own intent. Describe the look you want and ask Claude to save it as an intent. Claude shows you the intent first and saves it only after you approve. An intent names one profile for raw photos and one for JPEG, TIFF, PNG and the other rendered photos ("profile": { "raw": "Adobe Landscape", "rendered": "Color" }), and keeps white-balance starting values for each in "priors_by_pipeline", because a raw photo's temperature is in Kelvin and a JPEG's is relative. Intent files written for engines before 0.22.0 are skipped with a warning that says how to rewrite them.

• Copy, rename or delete your intents. "Copy golden hour as my_golden_hour with warmer shadows", "Delete my_golden_hour." Claude asks you before it saves or deletes. Only your own intents can be deleted; deleting one that replaced a bundled intent brings the bundled one back.

• Find, rate and keyword photos. "Find my five-star photos from September 7 with the keyword heron", "Which collections do I have?", "Rate the selected photos three stars", "Add the keyword pond to these photos." Claude searches by file name, keywords, star rating, capture date and collection, and sets star ratings and keywords on at most 100 photos per request. Claude tells you which photos will change first. Ratings and keywords are not Develop settings: History and snapshots don't cover them, but Claude can put the earlier values back on request.

• Keywords in a hierarchy. "Which keywords do I have under Places?", "Add Places > Europe > Paris to these photos." Claude lists your keyword tree and writes a nested keyword as a path, parent first with | between the levels (Places|Europe|Paris), creating the levels that are missing. A plain name means the top-level keyword of that name.

• GPS positions. "Set the location of these photos to 48.5818, 7.7509", "Remove the GPS position from this photo." Claude sets or removes the latitude and longitude of at most 100 photos per request, with each photo's earlier position in the answer. LrC-AVG does not write the altitude.

• Where a photo was taken and where its file is. "Where was this photo taken?", "Which folder are the selected photos in?" Search results, the selected photos and the photo open in Develop come with each photo's GPS position (empty for none); search results and the selected photos also come with the file's path. This needs plugin 0.21.0; with an older plugin Claude says so.

• Collections. "Create a collection 2026-10-04 in the set 2026 > Trips and put the selected photos in it." Claude creates a collection (and any missing collection sets), and adds photos to it or takes them out, up to 500 per request. Smart collections are refused: Lightroom fills them by their rules. No tool deletes a collection.

• Export. "Export the five-star photos of the collection Ella's Wedding to a new folder Ella Wedding Exports on my desktop, as PNG files that fit 2040 x 1080." Claude exports with your edits as JPEG, PNG or TIFF, full size or resized, or the original file. A file of the same name already in the folder gets a new name (name-2.png) unless you ask to overwrite or skip it.

• Import. "Import the photos on G:\DCIM that are not in the catalog yet, copied into D:\Photos\2026." Claude imports the photo files of a folder, where they are or copied first (never overwriting), and skips files the catalog already holds at that path. A photo imported earlier from another folder is not recognised as the same photo. No tool removes photos from the catalog: use Library > Remove Photo.

• Export and import work for about 40 seconds per request, then Claude goes on with another request until all are done. Each imported photo is listed with the file it came from (source), the file the catalog holds (path, the copy when copying first) and its capture time (empty if Lightroom has not read it yet).

Sync, presets, ratings, keywords, GPS positions, collections, exports and imports are not available while a session is open.

The HUD

The HUD opens by itself when an edit starts (if it is not open already), and from File > Plug-in Extras > LrC-AVG - Show Vision Gateway HUD. It takes the keyboard when it opens: click Lightroom's main window before you use keyboard shortcuts.

From top to bottom it shows:

• The headline: whose turn it is. Claude is working. Nothing needed from you. while Claude works. When something is needed from you it starts with "Your turn": Your turn: pick a copy, or tell Claude which one.; Your turn: approve pass n so Claude can go on.; Your turn: Claude thinks the edit is done.; Your turn: select the edit's photo again. After an edit ends: Done: the edit is kept. or Done: the photo is back as it was.

• The buttons (below).

• A feedback line: what your last click did (for example "Accept sent; waiting for Claude."), or the plugin's latest note.

• Photo: the file name (and copy name).

• Camera: ISO, shutter speed, aperture, lens and lens-profile status.

• Step: what is happening, for example Setting profile, lens corrections and baseline; Applying pass 2 of 4; Rendering a preview; Measuring the preview; Claude is looking at the result; Waiting for your pick; Waiting for your approval; Claude thinks the edit is done; Accepted; Aborted. From pass 1 on, the label is followed by the pass, for example "(pass 2 of 4)".

• The selection line: Selection: the edit's photo., or Target changed: … if you select a different photo during the edit.

• Changes in the latest pass: a grid with the slider, before, after and change, up to 12 rows. Sliders carry the names Lightroom's Develop panel shows, such as Orange Saturation.

• The clipping sentence: Clipping: within limits., or one sentence saying what the guardrails did, for example that a pass was undone, a clipping was corrected, or a slider was held back.

• The settings the edit uses (between edits, the settings page's).

• The connection line: Connected to Claude., Not connected to Claude., or LrC-AVG is not running in Lightroom.

A line that is too long for the window continues on a second line, and ends with "..." if it still does not fit.

Buttons:

The buttons are greyed out while the engine is not connected, and while the HUD checks an edit after a reconnect. After a click they all stay off until the engine answers that click, or for at most 10 s. When an edit ends, the HUD stays open and shows the outcome until you close it or the next edit starts.

Menu items

Under File > Plug-in Extras, in this order:

Each of the last five waits up to 20 s for the engine, and for an edit being checked after a reconnect, and reports in the HUD's feedback line. If it cannot send, the line says why, for example "Pick A not sent: no pick is waiting."

There are no keyboard shortcuts.

Settings

File > Plug-in Manager, select LrC-AVG (Autonomous Vision Gateway): the LrC-AVG settings section. Values are saved as you change them, and Claude's next session reads them; a session already open keeps its own. Claude can override a value for one session if you ask (for example "use 6 passes"), and an intent's own clipping limits come before the page's.

A value that is not valid is not used: the default takes its place, and the bottom of the section lists it with the reason. A changed log folder does not hide older sessions: the engine remembers every log folder it has used.

Approve each pass

Set Mode to Approve each pass to see each pass before Claude makes the next one.

• Pass 1 needs no approval.

• From pass 2 on, Claude's next pass waits up to 60 s for Approve pass n in the HUD.

• If you have not approved by then, nothing is written, and Claude is told to let you know the pass waits for your approval. Click Approve pass n in the HUD, or approve in the chat; Claude then records your approval and goes on.

• In Variants mode, picking a copy approves the pass it was picked at.

In testing, Claude also asked in the chat before each pass on its own.

Undoing an edit

• During a session: Abort, in the HUD or the menu.

• Afterwards: in Develop, the Snapshots panel has AVG pre-session … for each session and AVG pre-sync … for each synced photo; the History panel has every pass as its own step.

• Virtual copies from Variants mode stay in the catalog, including the ones you did not pick. LrC-AVG cannot remove photos: no Lightroom SDK call for it was found. To remove copies yourself, select them in Library, choose Photo > Remove Photos…, then Remove.

Where files go

Uninstall

1. Remove the engine from Claude Desktop, then uninstall it, in this order (the second command deletes lrc-avg-setup):

   lrc-avg-setup.cmd --remove
   npm.cmd uninstall -g lrc-avg

2. Quit Claude Desktop from the tray icon and start it again.

3. In Lightroom: File > Plug-in Manager, select LrC-AVG (Autonomous Vision Gateway), click Remove, then Done. Quit Lightroom.

4. Delete LrC-AVG's folders. This also deletes the session logs and your own intents:

   Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue `
     "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\LrC-AVG", "$env:USERPROFILE\.lrc-avg", "$env:TEMP\LrC-AVG"

Your edits stay in the Lightroom catalog: History steps, snapshots, virtual copies and presets are Lightroom's own, and uninstalling does not touch them.

Known limitations

• One PC tested: Windows 11, Lightroom Classic 15.5.1 and 15.6. Windows only.

• Process version: a photo on a Lightroom process version older than version 5 is refused. Update the photo to the current process version in Develop first.

• Missing originals: a photo whose original file Lightroom cannot find is refused, even when it has a smart preview. Claude tells you the file name and its last known folder. Reconnect the file in Lightroom (Library > Find All Missing Photos), then ask again. A sync skips such a photo and syncs the rest. If the file goes missing during an edit, the HUD says so, and Abort still puts the photo back.

• Masks: linear, radial, luminance and AI masks. A mask of two parts is made only in the forms checked in Lightroom: a linear with a radial added, subtracted or intersected; a radial with an AI part (sky, subject, …) added, subtracted or intersected; an AI mask with a radial added; a linear minus a linear; a radial minus a radial; a radial intersected with a luminance part. Only sky was checked among the AI kinds. Claude names any other form it was asked for and leaves the mask as it was. Brush and Color Range masks you made yourself are kept, but not edited.

• No crop or geometry. HDR photos edit, with exposure limited to ±5.

• One session at a time. Sync, presets, ratings, keywords and GPS positions are not available until it ends.

• Keep Plug-in Manager closed during a session. Lightroom pauses the plugin while Plug-in Manager or a menu is open (2.5 to 15 s in testing). The engine waits up to 60 s for the plugin during a session, but a long pause during a session has not been tested.

• Approve and Claude Desktop: whether Claude Desktop waits the full 60 s for an Approve has not been tested (in testing, Claude asked in the chat instead of waiting).

• If the engine disconnects during an edit (for example, Claude Desktop is quit), the HUD says "Not connected to Claude" and names the AVG pre-session … snapshot to apply in Develop > Snapshots. When Claude connects again, the HUD shows "Checking this edit with Claude..."; if Claude no longer has the edit, it says so and the same snapshot line stays.

• The HUD takes the keyboard when it opens. Every HUD button has a menu item. Inside the HUD, Tab moves to the first button that is switched on, and Space or Enter clicks it.

• A long note or clipping sentence can end in "..." in Lightroom, cut off at the window's right side. A later change fixes it.

• Renders show only inside the expanded tool-call boxes in Claude Desktop, not in Claude's answer.

• Presets: a new preset shows only after Lightroom restarts. Only the group "LrC-AVG" has been tested. Adobe camera profiles (Adobe Color, Adobe Landscape, …) are left out of presets, as are temperature and tint while white balance is As Shot.

• Virtual copies from Variants mode are never removed by LrC-AVG.

• Sync: at most 500 photos; Claude works through them about 40 seconds at a time.

• Keywords: a plain name always means the top-level keyword of that name, for adding and removing alike, even when a nested keyword has the same name; give the path to reach a nested keyword. Upper and lower case count as the same. A keyword removed from photos, and every level created, stays in the Keyword List; delete it there if you no longer want it.

• Keyword paths and GPS positions have not yet been tried in Lightroom. Keywords and GPS positions need plugin 0.10.0.

Development

Building from source, the development install and the project's checks: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.

Sources

The evidence behind the behaviour this page describes. Paths are in this repository unless they are URLs. Marks as in .claude/rules/02-sourcing.md: [handle: …] can be checked; [unverified] has not been observed yet; [inference] is reasoning; [community] is a user report.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 Jim Beebe.

NOTICE — third-party code

This project vendors and builds on Automaat/lightroom-mcp (npm @mskalski/lightroom-mcp):

• Upstream: https://github.com/Automaat/lightroom-mcp

• Vendored commit: a160e7aa250b3264694d88e51418f7f512f417de (2026-09-22)

• License: MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 Marcin Skalski. The full license text ships unmodified at vendor/automaat/LICENSE (identical copy at vendor/automaat/server/LICENSE).

• Vendored as a snapshot, not a GitHub fork: the upstream .git was removed and the files are otherwise unmodified; the two upstream Python files under vendor/automaat/skills/ are excluded from this repository's git (project rule: no Python).

• Code ported from Automaat into engine/ or plugin/ will keep Automaat's copyright and permission notice (a THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md ships with each packaged half), as the MIT license requires.

Details and file-level provenance: docs/AUTOMAAT_SURVEY.md §1–2.

Adobe, Lightroom and Camera Raw are trademarks of Adobe Inc. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe or Anthropic.