Adobe Photoshop Lightroom stores user assets, with their associated metadata and media renditions, in a catalog in the cloud.

Lightroom content of a Creative Cloud customer is managed through a set of RESTful APIs. These APIs are available only to entitled partner applications that have authenticated the customer, and the customer has given their express permission to the client to act on their behalf. The API Reference documents the available APIs.

Partners must register a new integration with Adobe to obtain a unique client identifier (API key) for their application. Partner applications authenticate Lightroom customers through the Adobe Identity Management System (IMS) using a standard OAuth 2.0 workflow. This process enables a client to obtain an access token that must be included along with the integration API Key in privileged requests to the Lightroom APIs.