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Inspiring
May 25, 2011
Released

P: a simple way to email, and drag and drop modified versions

  • May 25, 2011
  • 47 replies
  • 2255 views

For emailing photos you can do the post processing trick where you have Lightroom open the pictures in your email client after exporting, and leave copies the photos someplace on your hard drive that you have to then delete later because that method requires exporting the files as the first step.

There is a dude (Andréas Saudemont) who made a really cool plug-in so you can email directly from Lightroom skipping the need to actually export the image to a file someplace on your hard drive as an intermediate step.

I have to ask, with all due respect (I love lightroom, it's the only photo management app for me, I couldn't love it more, I know Adobe is a great company, no insult here), what were you guys there at Adobe thinking? How about being able to drag a modified image out of Lightroom and drop it in your mail app (or website creation app) and you actually get the modified version???!!!! Either that or a way to simply email the modified version as Andréas Saudemont's plug-in does smoothly, with no file clutter afterwards? Drag and drop makes the most sense to me. Why does dragging and dropping an image from Lightroom give me the original unmodified version? That seems like it would be the second most popular choice. Maybe you could add a way to pick on a case by case basis, like when you drag and drop an image somewhere a pop-up window asks "do you want the original or modified version?".

This really is a huge hole in Lightroom. I'd recommend Lightroom to people who are less technical and want to use Lightroom's basic features and then be able to email their photos. This just seems like a total no brainer. Make Lightroom so it can compete head to head with programs like Picasa and iPhoto in the ease of use category. It's already every easy to use and intuitive. Sure, the price is high, but it's relative. Make Lightroom more attractive and the price is less of an issue. If more people want to give you their money that's a good thing. Make them want to do that.

If the Adobe code guys aren't reading this forum how about anyone from sales?

With all respect, I love Lightroom and respect Adobe greatly, but you dropped the ball on this one.

47 replies

john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 26, 2011
OK, I give up. In any case it sends one email per picture, which might be OK in some circumstances, and the Mapi mailer plugin is much better.
Inspiring
May 26, 2011
If it's open and minimized, it pops up, but nothing happens at that point.
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 26, 2011
What if Outlook's already open? Any difference? Don't see why there should be, but....
ssprengel
Inspiring
May 26, 2011
What path to outlook exe are each of you using or trying to use?
Maybe the versions of Outlook are different, or maybe the combined-path of the program and the exported files is too big in one case?
Inspiring
May 26, 2011
Yep...Outlook opens but not with a new email message with the image as the attachment.
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 26, 2011
You sure you've got the right path there? Or permissions? I just tested with a new export action shortcut pointing to my Outlook.exe file and it worked as expected.
Inspiring
May 26, 2011
Just calling Outlook with the export module.
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 26, 2011
What do you mean by "it" there, Lee Jay? The SB Sutherland Mapi email plugin works perfectly for me with Outlook 2007 on Win7/64, as it did on XPPro.
Inspiring
May 26, 2011
Hmmm...it doesn't work with Outlook and it doesn't work with Live Mail. I believe those two are pretty common.
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 26, 2011
Not for all, but for enough - the most-used email clients do seem to though. Mine was just a command line suggestion, but a mapi-based one might scoop up a larger proportion.

Perhaps like Victoria, I'm rather fed up with having to show people they need to export a folder. Maybe we've just grown to accept something that's second best? And as Greg said, even bonehead-written apps have had email features for years.

John

PS It's also worth pointing out this LR-Gmail plug-in.