April 22, 2020
Publish Services in Lightroom
In this second part of the series, we look at a different way to export your photographs from Adobe Lightroom, Publish Services
Last week, we looked at the export process in Adobe Lightroom. It is an extremely powerful tool to create shareable photographs. A downside of the export process is that a second version of the file is on your hard-drive. Adobe thought about this and added a feature that allows you to send edited versions of your photograph without creating a copy. This week, we are going to look at a process called Publish Services. Before we start, I’ll give a health warning. Publish Services only work with a few sites, which is a real shame as it could be a fantastic tool.
Where are Publish Services?
You can find the Publish Services panel in the bottom left-hand corner of the Library Module. By default, it would look like there are four services available. Hard Drive, Adobe Stock, Facebook and Flickr. Unfortunately, one of these services doesn’t work. The nasty people at Facebook decided to stop the service in August 2018. For some reason, Adobe hasn’t cleaned up the interface to remove the Facebook option.
Setting up a service
We’ll set up the Flickr service to go through the process. You’ll need to have an account with the photo-sharing website. Make a note of your username and password as you’ll need it later on. Click on the words ‘Set Up’ next to the Flickr logo.
The Lightroom Publishing Manager screen will be displayed. Give the service a name in the Description box under the Publish Service section on the right. You can determine which field that Flickr uses to create the title. In this example, I will be using the IPTC Title Field, which you can set in the Library Module. There are similar options to set the size of the file, sharpening and metadata as we saw in the Export module blog last week. When you have set the options you want to use, press the Authorize button in the Flickr Account section.
A pop-up box will be displayed asking you confirm that you wish to authorise Flickr to interact with Lightroom. Click the Authorize button again.
If you are logged onto Flickr on your computer already, you’ll see the screen on the right. When not logged in, Flickr will ask you to sign in first. Once signed in you’ll see the same screen. The message is letting you know the permissions Lightroom needs to manage your photographs on Flickr. Take the option ‘OK, I’ll Authorize It’.
Lightroom will display another message where you confirm that the permissions are granted to allow the management of your pictures on Flickr. Press the Done button, and we are ready to start sending our images to Flickr without creating a JPEG file.
Using Publish Services
Now we have attached the Flickr service to Lightroom we can send our pictures to the site. Remember to update the IPTC metadata information with the title of the image(s) you are sending and do all the edits you need. Now simply drag the pictures you want to publish to the Publish Service on the left-hand side of the Library module. If you are using the Grid View, you’ll see the screen below. Lightroom shows the photos that are going to be sent to Flickr in the New Photos to Publish area. To send the images to Flickr, just press the publish button in the right-hand corner. Obviously, you’ll need to have an internet connection for this.
After the upload has finished, the photograph will appear in a new section, Published Photos. If you head over to Flickr, you’ll also see that your picture is visible on the site with the title, exactly as you specified. Better still, there isn’t a JPEG file anywhere on your hard-drive using up valuable disk space!
We are now going to do two more tasks. We’ll add another photograph to the Photostream on Flickr, and we’ll also update an existing picture. I have adjusted the texture on the original image published and dragged a new photo into the Publish Service for Flickr. The Publish Services screen shows that the new picture is in the New Photos to Publish. Our original shot is sat in a new section Modified Photos to Re-Publish. Click on the Publish button. You will be asked if you want to replace the picture that you have edited, click the Replace button. Our new and updated works of art appear on the Flickr site.
Other services available
Publish Services are powerful; however, Adobe hasn’t developed them as they should have done. There are other services available for sites such as SmugMug, ShootProof or PhotoShelter which you can download either from the relevant websites. You can also find more publishing services by clicking on the Find More Services Online button at the bottom of the Publish Services panel.
Coronavirus shut-down
We are going to have an extended period of lock-down so it would be great to have suggestions for blog-posts that you would like to see. Don’t forget; I have set up a Virtual Classroom on the Edinburgh Photography Workshop website. You can book a personal one hour webinar to help you with any aspect of your photography, including camera advice, Photoshop and Lightroom tips or portfolio reviews.
If you’d like to buy one of my limited edition prints, they are available at richdysonphotography.com
Give us your feedback
If you’ve got any questions or comments, leave them below. You can sign up for the Edinburgh Photography Workshop monthly newsletter where you’ll get regular updates on exciting things happening in photography and some great tips. Sign up by clicking here.