Sharing photos - Lightroom Classic vs Cloud

[jeffreylewis.esq]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic 12.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I am trying to understand how Adobe handles sharing of photos. I thought I had it figured out, but now I'm not so sure. I have the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, so both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (cloud/web-based) are available to me. I use LR Classic for my edits.

My question is how to allow people access to the best quality photo files via sharing options.

I tried sharing a collection of photos in two different ways. First, I used LR Classic, created a Collection, and set it to sync with Lightroom. They I created a shareable link for public access. That resulted in a shared album with reduced jpeg file sizes. I expected that result from other posts I read on this forum (thanks!). One photo that is a 7MB jpeg on my computer's hard drive resulted in a 1/2-MB file if I downloaded it from the shared album. No surprise there based on the reduced pixel size.

What surprised me was this: I created a new album via the web interface (so, in Lightroom not Classic). I uploaded the full-size jpegs from my hard drive to an album and created a public share. This time, when I downloaded a photo from the shared album, the same 7MB jpeg from my hard drive resulted in a 1.7MB download. It was still not the full 7MB file that I was getting. I assumed that uploading to the Lightroom cloud directly, rather than syncing from Classic, would give me the exact same jpeg files I uploaded.

So, my question is this: if I have a group of 50 photos, and I want to share them and make them available to download in the original resolution and file size, does Adobe have a way to do that?

Jeff

 

[tspear]

Jeff,

You have access to Adobe Portfolio as part of your plan. There are/were also third party plugins for LrC which integrated to other tools such Google Photos, Flikr.... One of my previous solutions was to use a plugin from Jeff Frediel (sp?) which worked with the publish system in Classic. I had this setup for publish to a location on Microsoft OneDrive where I shared with family and friends.

In addition, using the web sharing link in the cloud ecosystem does not match well your stated workflow or the fact you are Classic based.
I shot raw, and I have shared many albums with others, and when I enable download/export the images I have never noticed the disparity you mention. Unfortunately I cannot test at the moment, but may be able to next week if no one else answers.

Tim

 

[johnbeardy]

I am trying to understand how Adobe handles sharing of photos....

So, my question is this: if I have a group of 50 photos, and I want to share them and make them available to download in the original resolution and file size, does Adobe have a way to do that?

The two web routes allow you to share the files that would be displayed if the other person simply viewed the gallery in a browser.

But what about your Creative Cloud Files folder? It's like Dropbox or OneDrive and you'll see it in Explorer too. You can share folders from https://assets.adobe.com/cloud-documents which gives you a short url.

So if you want someone to view the pictures online and download copies in original format, then go to LR Web and its display tab where you can add headers to an album/colletion, and add the short url to the header title or description.

 

[Jim Wilde]

This time, when I downloaded a photo from the shared album, the same 7MB jpeg from my hard drive resulted in a 1.7MB download. It was still not the full 7MB file that I was getting. I assumed that uploading to the Lightroom cloud directly, rather than syncing from Classic, would give me the exact same jpeg files I uploaded.

Uploading to the cloud directly DOES give you an exact copy of them, however when you share in an album and the user uses the download option that is effectively an export in full resolution but NOT at full quality, i.e. the reduced quality setting means more compression which means a smaller file size. As a test, export that 7MB file from Classic at full resolution but using a quality setting of 70, then see what size output file you get. Your users would get something similar.