Thanks all for the feedback
I take the point about saving any conversions with initial processing to a selected folder ~ this I have been doing but as I had only just really come across the "open in external editor" function at that time I thought oh what a good idea
What I now need to do is look at "export presets" as advised by tgutgu (LR is still very much new territory to me) ~ I also need to look more into export options i.e. as PSD or TIFF to avoid any initial JPEG degradation once they are opening in QImage or indeed PS that could happen though granted any such losses would be tiny if exported and opened/saved in the external editors???
Thanks again ~ always good to try to improve the workflow