Best Way to Sync and Share

[GingeraMan]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to easily sync and share photos? For example, I just ran face recognition and pulled several hundred pictures together of my partner in to a collection and she gets a real kick out of going through them, but my preference is at her leisure online rather than on my PC which is just clunky and disruptive for everyone.

Is there a simple way to say sync and share with Google Photos or something? Just some online gallery that I can easily sync and share with would be perfect. I'm not trying to create a curated technically advanced museum - just a snap happy sync'd or published online album that my partner can flick through on her tablet.

I would happily install Lightroom Mobile however I cannot find a way to make it view only and when I've handed LR mobile to people to look through they screw up the flags by flicking all over the place. LR Mobile could not be any more ill suited to handing around for others to flick through your collections.

On the other hand I seem to be having some initial luck with Flickr.. I just hope that when I share an album it is not automatically open to the world. My partner would kill me.. Seems promising initially though as it seems I can even create a smart collection and automatically pick everything up with '<Name>' in 'any searchable field' which works fine.

Any thoughts appreciated...

Thank you..

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Do you use Facebook? You can publish the images to Facebook and set the access to the album to only you and her. You can do the same with Flickr, but indeed you have to make sure who can see the album and who can not...

 

[GingeraMan]

Thank you for the suggestions...

I have concerns with Facebooks practices and licensing... I've heard they will happily use your pictures however they please, no matter what you do.. So I do use Facebook, but with some caution... Flickr seems to be working for now though, you can set friend and family permissions and default to that in the plugin... Flickr does seem to default to open everything including bulk downloading though so I had to go through checking it all... It also seems to have a rating system so my partner can flag ones she likes... What I like most though is it appears to be able to sync changes with a smart collection...

The danger with all this though is you're only a few clicks away from blowing your private albums open and searchable to the world.

Sent from Samsung S8+ using Tapatalk

 

[johnbeardy]

Have you not tried the browser element of Lightroom Mobile? You don't need to install anything. In Lr Desktop, sync a collection to LrM, then make it "public", and share the URL. That's very little effort.

Your partner would then use a web browser to view the images. If she has an Adobe account or FB or Google, she can then like or make comments on images.

 

[GingeraMan]

No, I had not considered LRM at all, I was not aware it had this functionality... I'll check it out!

I don't want it public though, just shared with one person... I definitely do not want all our private pictures public ️

Sent from Samsung S8+ using Tapatalk

 

[prbimages]

I don't want it public though, just shared with one person... I definitely do not want all our private pictures public

️

Don't worry ... that button that says "Make Public" generates a unique random-looking URL for your collection, and only someone who knows that exact URL will realistically be able to see your photos. You just need to share the URL with your partner. The photos are certainly not "public" in the sense that they might be on Flickr or Facebook.

 

[GingeraMan]

Thanks... I guess anyone with the link could still access it though, however the chances of even brute forcing a random URL must be low. And it would be a lower profile target than say banking too I guess. So people regard that as fairly safe then.

 

[prbimages]

That's right. And if you're really worried about it, you can just click on the button again to return it to "private" after your partner has finished viewing the collection.

 

[GingeraMan]

That's good to know, thanks!! Looks good so far except for the small privacy concerns however a randomised URL may be fine. I wonder if one can re-scramble the URL's from time to time...

 

[johnbeardy]

Just add the images to a new collection and remove the old one.

 

[GingeraMan]

Thanks but I'd rather not have to move pictures around collections. I believe I can just remove access or clear the link for collections instead?

 

[johnbeardy]

I'm not sure. You can certainly remove "public" access and then restore it, but I'm not confident that changes the collection's URL. Maybe changing its name would do so, though I doubt it. You'll have to try sharing this way and decide if Adobe's "security through obscurity" is sufficient.

The big win compared to other methods is that it's effortless. You also have the collection available on your mobile devices, which you may want.

 

[GingeraMan]

True, it passed the partner test... She said she looked through it and she hates anything new, so that's great... it means it's intuitive enough for her to use and enjoy..

So I'll look more in to the security side and see what comes up there. Surely Adobe would be thinking about this too and may have security improvements planned.

For now it's good though. To be honest this is the first time I'd even looked at LRW and I'm quite impressed with it. I can even do basic processing on it. Which while I tested from a 'work quality' laptop today, that's actually a good thing as I can test-process on a low-common-denominator screen rather than my wide-gamut screen - which is my target online audience.

I think I'll persist with LRW for a while, and perhaps Flickr if I need to branch out more at all. But the LRW solution looks pretty solid.

 

[johnbeardy]

So I'll look more in to the security side and see what comes up there. Surely Adobe would be thinking about this too and may have security improvements planned.

A number of us have asked for password and watermark capability. More than once.

Maybe also play with sharing to a "Lightroom Web Gallery". Log into lightroom.adobe.com in your browser, activate a collection or all photos and select a number of thumbnails, then click the Share icon and choose Lightroom Web Gallery. This LWG exists as a new virtual collection (ie it's only in LrWeb) with a poster frame, the ability to divide into sections and add text etc.

By the way, you'll find that a few LR shortcuts work in the same way as in LR Desktop. You can also drag and drop to reorder images or copy them into other collections.

John

 

[GingeraMan]

Thanks, I'll check out LWG too... It seems for now that I can create an auto-collection (based on keyword search) so it should remain updated with little effort. Combined with LR's facial recognition I'm having a good time with this...

 

[prbimages]

Just be aware that "Smart Collections" cannot be synced online (unfortunately), only regular collections. So there is some manual work involved, namely, you have to put the images you want into the appropriate synced collection.

 

[GingeraMan]

Hmm that's a shame, you're right I just checked... Well it's still a start! Hopefully syncing of smart collections is on the road map too then..

 

[johnbeardy]

What you can do.... Create a dumb collection which will be synced - call it something like "My gang".

Then create a smart collection with your criteria plus one additional criterion line - Collection Name / Doesn't Contain / Gang. When this shows a number other than zero, it is identifying the photos that meet your criteria but aren't in your synced collection. Remember the Alt/Option + trick when creating the smart collection.

Not ideal, but faster than waiting for Adobe to change things.

 

[GingeraMan]

That would work just fine.... I can work with that Thanks for the tip!