Lightroom 3 Beta’s Publish Services – Part 2

In Part 1 we examined how to use Publish Services to control target folders on the hard drive using the Hard Drive Publish Connection.

There’s another Publish Service that comes with Lightroom 3 Beta. The Flickr Publish Service allows us to connect Lightroom to a Flickr account (or multiple Flickr accounts) and manage our photostream from within Lightroom. However, there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Remember, this is beta software, so as you come across issues or areas that can be improved please join the conversation over at the Adobe Forums and tell the Lightroom team about it. You can help make this a great release!

We start by creating the connection to Flickr. Click on the Set up… on the right side of the Flickr bar in Publish Services.

That brings up the Lightroom Publishing Manager we saw in Part 1.

The two differences here are the Flickr Account section and the Privacy and Safety section. Privacy and Safety are pretty self explanatory and relate to how the images are displayed in your Flickr account.

To make the connection press the Log In button. This brings up the authorization dialog. In order for Lightroom to be able to connect to your Flickr account, you need to grant permission to Lightroom from your Flickr account.

Click the Authorize button and your browser will open and take you to Flickr. If you are not already logged into your Flickr account, login and you will see the authorization screen.

Since you came here from Lightroom click the NEXT button in the right side box.

Flickr reminds you of what giving permissions to Lightroom means. Click the OK, I’LL AUTHORIZE IT button.

If all has gone well then Flickr will bring you to the success screen. You can now close your browser. When you return to Lightroom where the final dialog is waiting for you.

Click Done and you will see that the connection has been established.

Click the Save button and you will see your Photostream connection in the Flickr Publish Service.

Whew! Now you can control your Photostream from Lightroom. Drag and drop some images onto your Photostream then click on it to see the Publish window. Click the Publish button to upload them to Flickr. You will see them in the Published photos section.

If we check our Photostream on Flickr we find that they are there!

Pretty neat, eh? Wait. It get’s better. If someone makes a comment on your image in Flickr those comments will attach themselves to the image in your Lightroom catalog! No, really!

Here’s a comment entered in Flickr. Now press the Publish button again. Select the image and check the Comments section on the right side panel.

Lightroom comments.jpg

There’s the comment we entered on Flicker. You can also enter comments here that will upload to Flickr. We can also see how many times this image has been made a favorite.

We can also create sets in Flickr right in Lightroom. This is as simple as creating a Photoset under the Flickr Publish Service. Right click on the Flickr bar and choose Create Photoset…

If we add some images to this Photoset and click the Publish button a new set will be created on our Flickr account.

As more online Publish Services are added this will become a very powerful feature and workflow tool!

Now for a few warnings! I warned you that this is BETA software. If you delete an image from your Flickr account online it will be forever stuck in the Photos to be deleted section of your Flickr Publish Service! Only delete images published via Lightroom using Lightroom! That will keep your catalog and your Flickr account in synch.

There is also a difference between how Lightroom interacts with Flickr STANDARD accounts and Flickr PRO accounts. With a standard account you CANNOT edit an image and republish it to Flickr. That’s a limitation of Flickr’s API. Delete the image from your Flickr Publish Service, make the adjustment, add it back and Publish.

If you have a PRO account you CAN republish images. When you make a change the image will move to the Re-Publish section. Click the Publish button and the changes will be uploaded to Flickr.

There are lot’s of ways to put Rule #5 into practice with this new beta. so get out there and enjoy!

Print This Story Email This Story

Tags: beta, Tutorial

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Library, Lightroom 3, Tutorial, beta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Line Break

About the Author: Gene McCullagh
Contact Gene

Gene is an Adobe Community Professional and and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, and an avid Lightroom fan. He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene also the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).

In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.

rubyvrooom

just want to clarify, LR3 beta does not remove any photos from the library as i suggest in wish #2, i was just offering a possible use case if they did allow bidirectional removal of photos.
rubyvrooom

i have been using PS for a decade to edit my photos and i use my flickr Pro account to share them. in a search for a photo management tool i have tried NXview/NX capture, iPhoto, LR2 and Aperture and i can tell all of you, LR3 promises to be the one from me. NXcapture has some nice to haves, but LR's adjustment brushes and masks is even more powerful than NXcapture's excellent "control points".

I have been using LR3 beta for about a week and while the flickr integration is not quite there, i can see how powerful it could be for me. please keep up the development and here is my LR3 flickr wish list.

1) ability to set privacy settings per collection, set, photo. right now, in LR3 it is global and if i edit a photos privacy settings on the website manually, next time i sync LR it resets all the privacy settings to the global setting. not all my photos are private or public, it is a combination.

2) let me delete photos on flickr and when they sync, just remove it from the set in the Publish Services, not my Library/Catalog.

3) don't try to replicate to much of flickrs functionality within LR3 or dominate/overwrite what i do on the site. the flickr site is very powerful and familiar, i hate having LR undo things i have already done.

good luck and thanks for the great product,
Gene McCullagh

Thanks, rubyvrooom! The Publish Services functionality is still in its early stages and I'm sure will develop over time. I'll pass your wish list along to the design team.
Brent

In what order does the LR Flickr publisher upload photos? I can only seem to get it to upload from newest to oldest photo. Is there anyway to change the order?
Brendan

Brent, that is the same issue I've had with Flickr from the outset. It makes absolutely no sense at all and I had somehow wished that just maybe Lightroom had found a solution. To me this is a siginificant fault with Flickr, and could be a good selling point for Lightroom if they could resolve it.
Mark Fasano

Great new feature ... along with exporting photos from LR to Flickr, is there any way to import your existing Flickr photostream into LR? I'm thinking of something along the lines of synchronizing a local and remote site in Dreamweaver, e.g.
Gene McCullagh

Hi Mark!

Not yet. Existing Flickr content won't synchronize down to LR. Anything done after the connection is set up will be tracked. This feature is really in its early stages and has great promise so we'll have to wait and see how it develops.
wesley lee

Thanks for the tutorial. There's one MAJOR drawback to the "publish" service. I like what is done so far, but the "publish" dialogs only send the photos to the "photostream". I have 1000's of photos and I organize the photos in flickr "collections. Jeffrey Friedl has created a plugin which allows collections to be created within LR plugin. I hope this comes out in the final version of the flickr publish function.
Gene McCullagh

Thanks Wesley! This is the first step and I'm sure we'll see more as the Publish Services feature matures.

One correction, though. You aren't limited to just the photostream. You can create sets directly in LR via Publish services.

Jeffrey is already hard at work adapting all of his export plugins as Publish Services plugins so expect to see them for Flickr, SmugMug, Zenfolio, etc. Take a look at http://regex.info/blog/2009-10-22/1339

Lightroom Secrets