LR CC use a Collection from a different user?

[sanderso]

Hi Everyone:

New member, first post. Thanks in advance for your comments.

Been looking for info unsuccessfully and discovered this forum which seems to have many knowledgeable LR folks.

Question: If a primary user (me) using LR Classic on a local HD shares a collection to the cloud, can a different user (daughter) share that collection using LR CC? I believe it's possible to send a link from the LR Classic collection to share/view it, but my question implies more than simple viewing. For example, can the different user to also define new collections (or the LR CC equivalent) using the shared content originally from LR Classic.

Background 1: My daughter wants access to ALL the pix I've shot for a particular outing, and she would want to create her own collections using the shared images and other images she shot from her phone. Because I shoot in RAW, I can't, nor want to, send her a USB stick full of unprocessed pix.

Background 2: I've been happily using LR3.6 for years and know I must upgrade. I've concluded that I'll minimally need to upgrade to LR Classic to realize the features and functions I currently use, as well as to benefit from any cloud sharing functionality.

I know I'll need to purchase LR Classic and I'm assuming she would likely need her own paid LR CC subscription to get any sharing functionality.

Given the two subscriptions of Classic and CC, my question could be simplified as: Will her separate subscription and it's images play nicely with shared images from my Classic subscription?

Again, thanks in advance for your comments.

sanderso

 

[Jim Wilde]

Hi, welcome to forum.

I'm afraid the answer is no, it's not possible for a different user to share (in the sense of doing more than view and/or download) a collection, even if that user has their own separate subscription. You can share a collection and give the other user download capability (so your daughter could download individual images from the collection that you've shared and import them into her system), but there's no collaboration capability, i.e. both having edit access to the same files.

The potential problem with the "share and download" option is that if you sync the images to the cloud from LR Classic, that only uploads Smart Previews, not the originals, so that's all that would be available for download. If you want to allow the user to download full-size originals, you have to upload them either via LRCC (which is bundled as part of the Photography Plan subscription that you'd need for LR Classic) or LR Web (also available with the same plan).

 

[sanderso]

Thanks Jim. Was afraid you'd say that. After all, what I think I really need (would like) is a set of master pix on my local HD or in the cloud, with shared collections supporting user access rights control. Then, as admin, I would have control access/modify rights to the collections for each user. I think such a true, multi-user LR clearly exceeds the design spec for the target market Adobe has in mind.

Are you aware of any non-LR solution which provides this sort of functionality?

Thanks again.

sanderso

 

[Jim Wilde]

No I don't, but that's only because I'm not an avid researcher of Lightroom alternatives, so there may be a solution out there.

It's not 100% clear to me how "collaborative" you need the sharing to be, but have you considered something like Dropbox? You can certainly "share" a set of pictures that way, and I guess via XMP you could also share edits and metadata entry, but you'd need to be very careful about that.

 

[sanderso]

Again, thanks for your comments Jim. Thought I'd delay this reply to see if any other alternatives surfaced. None have.

RE Dropbox...yes, I suppose I could use DB or some other similar sharing platform to share Exported pix. The problem is that I'd need to Export the collection(s) which I want to share. In fact, I've been using Flickr for years to email links to Exported pix/collections I wish to share.

My daughter seems to want to have the ability to view my collections and define her own...with access to the entire library. From my perspective, I'd love to give her that ability, but without risking her changing a) my collection sets and b) the underlying pix. Again, seems like a perfect design spec for a multi-user LR with rights control to various functions within LR.

I'll keep looking for a solution. Thanks again for your comments!

sanderso