P: Multiple Selection Smart Collection Set Export should export all selected SC's

Out of touch for a while. Thanks for the tip!!

Just to check, there are two similar plugins offered - Folder Publisher and Collection Publisher. Both these plugins create and manage image folders externally, containing exported copies of the edited images within the Catalog. To see those copies organised in the same way as they are in Collections within the Catalog: it is Collection Publisher that should be used.

I installed and tried this plug-in, but I could not figure out which options to choose to get regular folders SETS on disk that match the collection SETS in LRC. I always wound up with MIRROR folders (which matched), which include the word "mirror" as part of the folder names. But I need name & collection set:folder matching for further procesing. Any tips on which options to select on which panels to get SETS of folders created, would be greatly appreciated. I don'nt want my images to al lget dumped in the same folder (the parent).

The suggestion to only select the collections and make sure that no image is selected at the time doesn't seem to work. (Interesting point that image selection could confound other selection ... yes, there is a lot of selection states going on).

It still asks to save effectively the last item in the selected collections. It only saves the last one. 

Checked whether there was any magic to combine multiple in a single file format ... alas no.

Good to know that the process is codable ... was wondering how much that can be automated and have been reading up on Lua. I acutally now need to automate the creation of multiple smart collections since I know the categories beforenand.

Publishing out to hard disk in folders is entirely doable without the plug in. I ended up finalising a solution that worked. It even uses Smart Collections. 

The hurdle is that you have to do the export / import process with the Smart Collection. It works as a two step as I found it easier to do the checking before turning it into a published service. A drag of the Smart Collection from Collections to Published services, as well as multiple selection support, would reduce the tedium of exporting out one at a time.

There's a slight UI delay in the published service, you aren't quite sure that the process has kicked off when you are dealing with multiple collections - there's no feedback initially. It does feel like it takes longer than the built in export. You are waiting 10s of seconds for folders with between 3-10 images - so there seems to be opportunities for perfomance optimsations. But if you watch the target folder, it gives you the clue about images being written out to disk.

Just gathering some quantitative evidence about performance: To write out 61 folders as a hard disk published service which only contained 301 images the time difference between the creation of the first folder to the last was 30 minutes! Images were exported with a defined edge size, so there's some re-rendering to do. I'm sure we can do better than 6 seconds per image.

There's also another interesting function that I haven't found yet and that is to be able convert an existing Smart Collection into a non-Smart Collection, effectively locking the contents so it no longer dynamically responds to search result change. If you need to archive collections and know exactly what was defined at a certain point in time this would be useful - you don't need change after a certain point; the collection has been smart enough up until now.

If the images can be grouped into standard Collections (as opposed to Smart Collections): a plugin from Jeffrey Friedl can directly live-publish those out to disk, in a folder tree to follow how these various Collections, and Collection Sets, are seen inside the Catalog. http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/collection-publisher 

This workflow could be so much more efficient if multiple selection and export of Collections actually understood and iterated through multiple selection. Just asking for the top level folder and then saving each one with the default file name. 

Importing back into the Published service actually support multiple selection in the open panel.

So doing this one smart collection at a time. Exporting out from the Collection and reimporting into the Published service.

Another way to do this could be via the Export definitions. 

However you would need template editor that understood inserting a path based on a variable. Currently the path to which you export your files is defined once at the top level. There are no variations. Of course, you still need a top level root folder.

So in my case I would want to Export out the file with a folder that is based on the current collection name.

So the file template editor would need to be enhanced with a subfolder definition section.

I could imagine that could also use a keyword to construct the subfolder name - only works if there is one keyword.

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please move to Ideas.

"Multiple selection is being ignored."

Unfortunately, LR has always behaved this way and there have been a few similar complaints in the past, e.g.

https://feedback-readonly.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-collections-multiple-selection-is-possible-with-export-smart-collection-settings/5fb11bf9408c920f41a40568