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

"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???!!!! "

Which modified version? What size? What export sharpening? What file name? How would that be controlled?

"what were you guys there at Adobe thinking?"

Perhaps what I am, that about a thousand other feature requests are more important than this one, since this one can already be done so easily with the existing tools.

That seems to be problematic going by the comments on the dude's site, plus it appears that it still requires exporting the files to the hard drive, and it seems to be for Windows only. Andréas Saudemont's plug-in is the cat's meow.

I agree with the above comments regarding making the process easy.
If you drag a thumbnail to your email app surely you would want that version emailed - I know I would and do.
Hence my support for this request.

Steve,

I understand what you wrote and I agree 100% with the part of the picture that you described, but I think there's just more to the picture.

I think the fact that it's not easy to email from Lightroom is one of the biggest gripes consumer and semi-pro users have with it. I understand Lightroom's target group is the pro and semi-pro photographers, but if adding an easy way to email photos would attract a very large more consumer-level user group then to me it seems like a no brainer. And if I was in sales, and I saw that with just a very minor tweak to the code we could make a substantial increase in sales I would call that "dropping-the-ball".

I mean honestly, how many people are going to do all the corrections and adjustments they make to a photo and then want to drag and drop the untouched original into an email or web page? Yes, they will want to drag and drop the original to another app in their professional workflow, but when the workflow is done and the finished product is there all nice and pretty, how about an easy way to do something with it.

Again, I realize dropping pictures into emails and web pages is a more consumer-ish thing but go after that market too. And pros do that stuff as well. So if you make it easy to do one or the other, to drag-and-drop either the original or the modified version, you're going to make both the consumer and the pro happy.

You're right, there's many times when the user is going to want to drag and drop the original. And for the professional photographer, that's probably more than 50% of the time.

Now here comes the really important part I want to focus on. How hard would it be for after a photo drag and drop for the app to pop up a dialog box asking "do you want the original or the modified version of this image/images"? Compared to all the lines of code that went into Lightroom, I think it would be a tiny amount. And that right there could satisfy both needs. It could satisfy the pro and the consumer.

Or here's another idea. Holding down the option key while dragging and dropping delivers the modified version instead of the original? How much code would that be? How many people would say "That's cool! I always wished Lightroom could do that!"?

I'm not trying to be argumentative here but I'm honestly telling you there's a number of friends to whom I've not recommend Lightroom but because of lack of an easy (compared to other consumer grade photo management apps) way to use the beautiful photos that Lightroom makes so easy to manage and improve.

I totally love Lightroom. 100%. And for me having to export photos before using them in my web site or emails isn't a show stopper. It's a pain in the posterior, but I deal with it. If I had an easier way to go straight from Lightroom to my emails and web pages it would be heaven.

Now with Andréas Saudemont's plug-in I have an easy way to email my photos straight from Lightroom. I love it and I use it all the time. I'm not trying to plug his product. It's free and I can't even find a donate button on his web site. I emailed him and asked him how I can buy him a beer.

I have to say I've never understood software developers who hard code one choice which is only going to satisfy a portion of their user base (or potential user base if the lack of choice keeps people away) when offering the choice would make everyone happy. Apple is the quintessential example of this. It's Steve's way or the highway for a lot of things, like the user base crying out for an autocorrecting spell check. So guess what, a lot of people use Microsoft's (there I said it and now I feel dirty) Entourage/Outlook email program just for that one feature. Sometimes one feature can make a big difference.

Back to the topic at hand, google "lightroom export to email" and you'll see people are looking for this.

Lightroom is perfect in everything it does. If it just had one or two more features that made it a bit easier to actually use the photos it would appeal to a bigger audience. More people would want to give Adobe their money. I don't see the downside in that, unless they just don't want any more money. In that case, since I'm the one pushing this thing, maybe they could send me the extra money. I'd gladly do that to help make Lightroom better.

Respectfully
Greg Ihnen

Windows users - see SBSutherland's plugin

Come on Steve, you're being far too forgiving with all that fluff. Users should not need to go looking for plug-ins to email files directly from LR.

It's not rocket science and IIRC it was simply an export preset (limited to Mac) in LR1.

I don't think it's a case of LR dropping the ball...

Lightroom has access to the original file, a possible preview file, and could render a copy of the original file with LR adjustments.

Which of these that Lightroom would serve-up for drag-and-drop, and whether the delete the file, afterwards, would depend on the destination and LR cannot predict or necessarily know what the destination is for the particular drag-and-drop operation. That is the issue.

In the case of e-mail, you are probably sending a temporarily-created rendered copy of the file that may need to be a particular small size or have a watermark and probably needs to be cleaned up, later.

If you are dragging and dropping onto Photoshop, then it needs the original with the conversion recipe so PS can use ACR to open the file in memory, but how does the conversion recipe get communicated if it is a camera-raw format that doesn't have it embedded in the original file?

If you are dragging and dropping onto a third-party image editor, then LR needs to send a full-sized rendered copy of the file but can't know if it should clean the file up, or if the third-party application has saved it and it should keep it around.

The issue comes down to when you drag-and-drop LR would need to allow you to choose between what happens with Edit In Photoshop, Edit In, and Export, or just sending references to the original files like it does, now, and also would need to know if an intermediate file should be kept or deleted.

This is too much or at least too cumbersome for a simple drag-and-drop process to do, itself, so Adobe has provided separate Edit In, Export and drag-and-drop-original-reference functionality.