Make Photoshop Your Default Image Editor In Windows 10

Turning On File Name Extensions

First, in Windows 10, use File Explorer to navigate to a folder that contains one or more photos. Here, I've opened a folder that's sitting on my desktop. Inside the folder are three images. By default, Windows 10 hides the file extensions at the end of the file names, so at the moment, all I'm seeing below the thumbnails are the file names themselves. There's nothing to tell me which type of file I'm looking at:

Open a folder in Windows containing some images.

To turn on the file extensions, click on the View menu at the top of the screen, then select File name extensions in the menu by clicking inside its checkbox:

Opening the View menu and turning on "File name extensions".

The three letter extension will appear at the end of each file name. In my case, we see that my images are all JPEGs (with the ".jpg" extension). In a moment, we'll see how to set Photoshop as your default viewer and editor for all JPEG files, but you can follow the exact same steps for other file types as well, like PNG (.png) and TIFF (.tif):

The file extension now appears after the name of each image.

The Default Image Viewer

Let's try opening one of the photos in Windows 10 and seeing what happens. I'll double-click on the "three kids.jpg" photo in my folder to open it:

Opening a photo inside the folder by double-clicking on its thumbnail.

Even though I have the latest version of Photoshop, the world's most powerful image editor, installed on my computer, Windows completely ignores it and instead opens the photo in its own Photos app:

In Windows 10, the image opens by default in Photos.

That's not what I wanted, so I'll close out of the Photos app by clicking on the Close icon (the X) in the top right corner:

Closing out of the Photos app.

Making Photoshop The Default Image Viewer And Editor

So how do we tell Windows to automatically open this image, and all other JPEG images, in Photoshop rather than in Photos (or some other app)? Easy! First, right-click on the photo's thumbnail inside the folder:

Right-clicking on the photo's thumbnail.

This opens a menu with various options. Select Open with, then select Choose another app:

Go to Open with > Choose another app.

Windows will ask which program you want to use to open the file, and will offer a list of some possible choices. If you see Photoshop listed, go ahead and click on it to select it. If you don't see Photoshop after scrolling through the list, click the More apps option below the list:

If Photoshop does not appear in the initial list, choose "More apps".

Scroll through the list of additional apps that are installed on your PC and select Photoshop. Then (and this part is very important), before you click OK, select the Always use this app to open .jpg files option by clicking inside its checkbox. This sets Photoshop as the new default app for opening JPEG files on your computer:

Select Photoshop from the list, then select "Always use this app to open .jpg files".

Once you've selected Photoshop and the "Always use this app to open .jpg files" option, click OK to close out of the list, at which point the image will open in Photoshop:

The image now opens in Photoshop instead of Photos.

If, for some reason, Photoshop did not appear in the More apps list, and you know for a fact it's installed on your computer, then you'll need to locate Photoshop yourself by browsing to its location on your hard drive. Before you go looking for it, though, select the Always use this app to open .jpg files option first. You won't get the chance to select it later so we need to choose it now before we continue. Then, click on the Look for another app on this PC option:

Choose "Always use this app...." first, then click on "Look for another app on this PC".

Browse to the location on your hard drive where Photoshop is installed. You'll usually find it on your C: drive. In my case, it's under Program Files > Adobe > Adobe Photoshop CC 2015. Double-click on the Photoshop.exe file to select and open Photoshop:

Opening Photoshop by browsing to it on my hard drive.

The image will instantly open in Photoshop, and because we chose the "Always use this app to open .jpg files" option first, Windows will set Photoshop as the new default app for all JPEG files:

The image opened in Photoshop.

To make sure everything is set up correctly, I'll close out of this image in Photoshop and go back to my Photos folder on my desktop to choose a different image. I'll double-click on the "family.jpg" photo to open it:

Opening a different photo.

This time, rather than opening in the Photos app, the image opens by default in Photoshop. As I mentioned earlier, you can follow the exact same steps with other file types, like PNG and TIFF, to make Photoshop the default editor for those types as well:

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