What to choose for publication?

Lightroom is one of the best software for cataloging and processing photos. But if you want other people to see your photos, you need to move them from Lightroom to something else. Flickr, one of the oldest photo hosting sites, has long been the most popular. Now it has lost its leading position, but still has a huge user base.

There are several ways to post a photo to Flickr. The first, the simplest, but also the most inconvenient, is to save the processed photo from Lightroom to your hard disk. Open Flickr in a web browser and use the Flickr website’s upload function. If you need to upload several photos and “forget” about them, you can limit yourself to this method.

If you publish a large number of photos, if you need to sort them by album in Flickr, if you need to sync the versions of photos in Lightroom and Flickr, then you need to use the Lightroom publishing service for Flickr.

Since version 3.3, Lightroom has a built-in feature for publishing images from Lightroom to Flickr. The main drawback of the standard publication service is the lack of the ability to publish in Flickr groups.

For those who did not have enough features of the standard Lightroom plugin, most of them start using the Jeffrey Friedl’s Lightroom plugin for Flick. This plugin has a huge number of settings, allows you to publish photos, both in albums and in groups. I used this plugin for several years, but gradually I began to miss its features.

When posting photos to a Flickr group with a limited number of posts, I know in advance this number and, therefore, when to abort the posting process. And if the deadline for the next publication has not yet come, then do not start it. However, when there is a publication in a group that does not set restrictions, we would like to be able to artificially limit the number of publications.

In Flickr, there are a huge number of groups that use photo statistics. Such as the number of views, faves, comments, and even the number of gallery placements. This data is used in various combinations. For example, 20 faves and less than 400 views, or more than 30 faves, but less than 39 faves, etc.

Lightroom does not provide the ability to search by numeric user fields, so this version only updates the statistics of published photos. The plans for the next versions include the implementation of publications on conditions. In addition, a batch publication is planned, that is, a parent album with all attachments.

If you are interested in this, as well as some other features of the plugin, click the download button, install and try. You might like it. I will also be grateful for your feedback, comments and suggestions.

The plugin uses SHA-1 Secure Hash computation, HMAC-SHA1 secure signature computation and Twitter OAuth Authentication Routines courtesy of Jeffrey Friedl, for which I am very grateful to him.

Configuring the plugin.

Setting up a plugin in the Plugin Manager service generally affects how it works in Lightroom.

The VGphoto section of the "Export to Flickr" plugin.

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The home page of the plugin is a link to the main page of this site.

Version - specifies the installed version of the plugin.

Check for updates now - Checks for a newer version of the plugin. If there is one, an update occurs. A Lightroom reboot is required to complete the installation.

Registration information - indicates the current status of the plugin. For the initial review, an introductory period of 45 days with full functionality is given. At the end of this period, a limited mode is enabled with the possibility of ten operations with images.

Registration – you can register at any time. Enter the received registration code, after a positive result of checking the code, you get a full-featured version. It is advisable to restart Lightroom. After registration, this button allows you to get information about registration, as well as to refuse registration. Failure to register returns the plugin to the trial or limited version mode. You can repeat the registration process with the same registration code if the number of registrations per key is not exceeded.

Logging section

Information about the plugin is recorded in the service file MyFlickr. log. The level of detail depends on the choice of the debug level. From none, when no information is recorded, before debug, when all the information is written, including the values of many variables. In the latter case, the size of the debug file can significantly increase the volume.

Clear Log - deletes the current debug file and creates a new one.

Open Log - view the current debug file.

Submit Log - sends the current debug file to analyze the problem. Fill in the fields in the window that opens, describe the situation in detail, and click Send. You can view and delete the extra information in the debug file.

By default, it is located in the My Documents folder. If necessary, you can change the location. In this case, the debug file is created in the new location, and deleted in the old one.

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Section Enable the Lightroom Comments panel

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When you turn on the check-box, comments will be read and you will be able to write comments to your images. The information is displayed in the Comments section of the panel. Including this mode, it is necessary to take into account the significant amount of information transmitted. The changes will take effect after you restart Lightroom.

Creating Export and Publish Services

A publishing service is created to communicate between Lightroom and the web service (usually, but not necessarily) and synchronize the published collections.

You can have multiple Flickr publishing services. If you have multiple Flickr accounts that you want to send images to, then a separate publishing service is created for each account. This version of the plugin applies the Privacy and security settings to all images of the publishing service, so for publishing personal and public images, you must also create separate publishing services. In general, if there are any differences in the image publishing settings, you need to create a separate publishing service.

Make sure that the MyFlickr plugin is installed and enabled, then click " Set up...". In the future, to create a new publishing service, you can use the context menu item "Create another publishing service using MyFlickr...", which appears when you right-click on the existing MyFlickr publishing service.

This will bring up the Lightroom Publish Manager dialog.

Publish Service

By default, the display name of your Flickr account is used. You can enter any name that describes the service you are creating. You can change the name at any time. Repetitions of service names within the same publication service are prohibited.

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Flickr Account

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First, log in to your Flickr account using a web browser. By clicking the "Authorize" button, you will be asked to complete the authorization process. If successful, the message “Log in " will appear” and the display name of the Flickr account. You can't change your account in the future.

Export Location

Determines where the generated files will be placed before publishing. This value cannot be changed in the future. In this plugin, the same image can be published from different publishing services (albums, smart albums) to different Flickr albums (groups). Therefore, in order not to create duplicate copies of the same image, the export location will be cleared after each publication.

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File Naming

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This standard section defines the need to rename the file and the rules for renaming it. All standard and created renaming scripts will be available in the Name / Description section in Flickr. So if you want to define rules for creating an image name and description, create them in this section using the metadata tags provided by Lightroom.

Standard settings for the publishing service

The following sections are all the same as in the standard Lightroom export dialog box.

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Flickr Title / Description

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As mentioned above, the scripts in the Filenames section are used here. If the script is created in the current session, it cannot be used until Lightroom restarts.

Metadata: Keywords and Republication

If you have filled in the metadata of the image location, then you can publish them to Flickr as keywords. However, they are not included in the List of Lightroom keywords. The second part of the section determines what changes affect the change in the status of the image from Published to the Changed photo for re-publication.

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Delete photo from Lightroom

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     Be careful with the process of deleting images. I recommend that you leave the default settings, so that if you accidentally delete it, you can cancel the action. Also, it should be understood that if the deleted photo was in the status of Published or Modified photo for re-publication, it will change the status of the Photo for deletion. Actual deletion from the service and possible deletion in Flickr when the album is updated again.

Publishing in groups

When creating albums, you can specify the frequency of publishing an image. If the check box to control the frequency of publications is enabled, then the check for the possibility of publications will be performed before the start of image generation. This saves time and resources, but the billing period may differ from the actual opportunity. If this mode is disabled, the images for publication are generated first, and the publication attempt is made. If the response is not possible to publish, the generated images are deleted and the

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In Flickr, there is a limit for publishing images in groups (60 for Pro members, 30 for free members). When creating a group, the administrator specifies this group will count towards the photo's limit or no. If, when trying to publish to a group, Flickr returns a message after reaching the limit, the enabled mode does not take into account the number of groups for the photo, the image is not included in the group, but is transferred to published. Otherwise, the image does not change its status and waits for the next publication. You can remove an image from groups that affect publication restrictions in any way you can.

Information about successful publications is recorded in the Image Publication Protocol Pool_ (publication date). log. You can change the location of the protocols that are written to My Documents by default. Many groups require you to mark and comment on the images in the group after you post your images. The information from the protocol will help you not to break the rules of the group.