Lightroom web filenames

[snapper]

I've had a request from my biggest client to create a "filing/approval" system - preferably by tomorrow so they can sort through my photos with their web designer.

The timescale is not as ridiculous as it sounds - I've already used Lightroom Web to show them pictures, but just not organised the way they want it. The approval thing is new though.

The biggest hurdle to using Lightroom Web though is the lack of filenames. It's a hot topic on feedback.photoshop.com, and I posted there as well - why are they not displayed. One of the adobe engineers cam back with the information that if you hit i on the keyboard then you get the filename in the thumbnail display.

Well, that's a start. Checking out some of the engineers other posts, I found that the Caption is displayed in the full screen info panel as well (This is even when logged in as a random user (my client), not the owner of the photos, or not logged in at all). It's a short step then to copy the filenames to the Caption field (using John Beardy's Find replace plugin), and then it gets displayed for my client when they view the galleries I've shared.

Approvals - not sure - but I can get them to like the pictures if they approve, and I can get them to comment. It means that they have to create an adobe Id - but that's not too hard.

The thread is here Lightroom mobile: Photo info missing | Photoshop Family Customer Community - scroll to the bottom for the useful stuff ;-)

 

[johnbeardy]

Some folk do moan about creating an ID though! So maybe just create the Adobe ID for them eg [email protected] and give them the logon details. They can then "like" to select images, and add comments too.

 

[snapper]

I'll see John - I've other things to worry about first! Mind you, I could invoice them for that as well ;-)

 

[johnbeardy]

Unfortunately Adobe don't quite see how well lightroom.adobe.com web galleries could be suited to this selection process. From your viewpoint, the photos are uploaded automatically and served to different screen sizes, and any changes are automatically uploaded too. Yet a few deficiencies make it much less than it could be. Filenames are one, watermarking another, and why can people still not use G+ or FB accounts to add their likes and comments? Then once people have commented, you immediately see their selections in Lightroom - yet you still can't filter on them. At least there is a Latest Comment sort order.

John

 

[snapper]

I totally agree John. I think they designed it without understanding why (at least the no editing part of the web interface) it would be useful, what use cases would it fulfil.

Sort order in the web interface is also missing - only the ability to sort ascending or descending by Capture time (I think that's what it is).

But how do you get Adobe to recognise that a few small changes could make such a huge difference to the functionality of the product. The other missing bit is being able to deliver images at a finished resolution (ie greater than currently - which is good for web but not for print).

I could see this as a long term solution - but I don't. I'm in the process of selecting a new product for photo delivery on my web site. It's mostly web sales of images and prints. But I'd like to be able to include a very functional Client proofing and delivery section. I'm down to a list of two - Photodeck and Sytist. Both have bits missing in my opinion. If I could rely on Adobe LR Web for the Client proofing in future it would make my life a lot easier.

Gareth

 

[snapper]

QUick question John -Using your 'experimental' version of Search, Replace, Transfer - so I can use the caption builder. But the caption builder doesn't let you replace, add before or add after the caption? Is this by design. Just I have some captions in the data I'm trying to mangle to solve the above conundrum.

 

[johnbeardy]

Yes, it's by design, as that feature was meant for a specific workflow. The Transfer tab does the before/after, but it's one field at a time - I feel that safeguards us against all the damage we could quickly inflict on our metadata!

 

[snapper]

Of course the work around for this is quite easy, as Caption is one of the IPTC fields in the Caption builder. Just append or prepend the Caption field in the new caption string.

 

[snapper]

I implemented my basic approval system today (well, late last night and most of the morning), and the client liked it
She was quite happy to create an adobe id, and go through the images using the web interface and like the photos that she wanted to have approved status.

My next problem was actually managing the liked and commented photos - which of course LR in it's native form doesn't provide any useful tools for. Thankfully Google threw up the "Any Comment" plugin by John Ellis that allow you to sort comments, save the info to a metadata field, etc. and is generally rather good

So, Client happy, I'm relieved, and I can envisage a feature request post for Adobe being created in the near future

And typing g in the fullscreen web view goes back to the grid layout....obvious but no, afaik documented

 

[johnbeardy]

A few keyboard shortcuts work the same. If you are in the owner's view, PUX, 0-5, G, E, and in Edit View letters like V, R, etc.

 

[JF Maion]

Gareth, this is the PhotoDeck founder here. Out of curiosity, what bits do you think are missing in PhotoDeck? We're actually starting a project to vastly improve client proofing and delivery

 

[snapper]

JF, I'm in the process of actually documenting what I want, and where there are gaps in functionality in the products I'm looking at - I'll share these with you directly when I've made more progress. But thanks for asking this directly.

Good detective work though - I presume you use Google alerts ;-)

 

[JF Maion]

OK, thanks. And yes we use Google Alerts