Inspiring

Question

Way for others to view your photos

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
November 13, 2016
8 replies
5176 views

Before lightroom, I used to have my 200,000 photos on a NAS drive, and photoshop edited copies would be held in the same directories as the originals with _a, _b etc in the file name. I used iSCSI to mount the NAS drive when editing.

Anyone in my family could view them any time by browsing the NAS share in read only mode (so they could not delete or modify them). My wife would take them and make photo books, calendars, and send out photos of our kids to friends and distant family.

Happy times.

Then about 5 years ago I got lightroom and laptop with 2TB ssd. Since then, all my photos are locked onto my laptop in the lighroom catalog and on the SSD, and my wife and children only see about 1% of the photos which I have time to edit and publish to Facebook or my professional website or similar.

When I retire, I might have time to go through my half a million photos, edit them, and publish them to a website in high res.

Lightroom has killed photography for my family. Now the only photos anyone sees are the few my wife takes with her phone which she instant shares on FB.

I am hoping that someone out there will make a view app, which allows someone on a PC or ipad or simialr to view and copy the edited and not yet edited photos (but not let them edit or delete them!!!!) which are on my laptop (while it is running and connected to the local LAN of course).

Until that day, lightroom has killed photography, sharing and collaboration for our family. There are no more photobooks, no more printed photos, as my wife has no read only access to browse ALL the pictures on my laptop on her laptop or ipad.

I am a professional photographer with about £50,000 worth of camera kit. I work 12 hours a day, so cant spend hours editing, publishing and managing external hard drives or other method of giving photos to my family to work with.

If anyone knows of an app, or hack, or way to share photos locked into lightroom, let me know. I was even thinking about writing an app which can run on the machine lightroom is running on, and produces a dynamic website which sucks data out of lightroom catalog and thumbnail database, to produce a way my family can brows and download the complete set of photos, then use some external apps such as picassa to create photobooks or edit them if they are not edited.

Its a shame adobe has completely missed the family market. It should have an application, e.g. lightroom lite, which allows people on your local network to view your catalog, and even create their own edits which are uploaded automatically into your master catalog if you have allowed this on the folder. I am guessing Adobe made a huge mistake when they chose an ancient single user database as their catalog implemenation. Hopefully someone like apple or google will come up with a multiuser family oriented version of lightroom.

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

If anyone knows of an app, or hack, or way to share photos locked into lightroom, let me know. I was even thinking about writing an app which can run on the machine lightroom is running on, and produces a dynamic website which sucks data out of lightroom catalog and thumbnail database, to produce a way my family can brows and download the complete set of photos, then use some external apps such as picassa to create photobooks or edit them if they are not edited.

Yeah this is all built in. Publish services can do this for you. Publish to a typical NAS and it will index and present the mages in a neat interface for you. You just have to hit the publish now button once in a while to update it. Publish to a web service such as smugmug, Facebook, snapfish, zenfolio, etc. and you'll have automated galleries, keyword searching, etc.

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nutmix5Author

Inspiring

@jao vdL, thanks for the reply. smugmug etc, is not really an option, because

I have 1TB+ of images.
you loose all the tagging I have painstakingly done over the last 5 years in lightroom.
There are two types of files. Those I have not processed - about 750GB of raw files, and those I have processed and prodcued around 100GB of manicured albums (aka collections in lightroom). These I do upload to zenfolio, in a hierarchy (places, people, travel etc)
There is no plugin for zenfolio unfortunately.
I tried the smugmug publish plugin some years back, and it was unusable in that if I upload the raw files, then later processed them, or edited one, I would have to upload the whole lot again, and it was more work than manually curating the files. The workflow was horrible for large numbers of files. I dont know if its works better now.

The main problem is that all the files are carefully indexed and tagged in LR, and all the manual export options lose this data so the resultant "raw dump" is unsearchable.

What I need is a read only way for family access my lrcat, without having to buy a complete new licence. I still have no solution.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

1. You shouldn't be giving them raw files. They are useless to folks without Lightroom or Photoshop camera raw. So using a publish service you should set it up to export jpegs which are useful to normal folks

2. No you don't. All of the metadata tagging is embedded in the exported files. Apps like Picasa, Apple Photos, etc. read all this metadata and you will have searchable keywords, etc.

3. That makes sense. Zenfolio should have all your keywords in place.

4. Yes there is: Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s “Export to Zenfolio” Lightroom Plugin

5. Not sure what you mean. You don't upload raw files but jpeg copies with these publish plugins. It will only re-upload the files that are changed not the "whole lot"

The main problem is that all the files are carefully indexed and tagged in LR, and all the manual export options lose this data so the resultant "raw dump" is unsearchable.

You don't lose any of that. The exported files will have all the keywording and metadata you tagged you images with. This will make the exported files searchable just fine.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

There are lots of ways to solve the immediate problem. Simplest is to set up a publish service in Lightroom that publishes jpeg copies to a shared folder on your NAS. Just put a smart collection in the publish service that automatically publishes all family images. You can also have a publish service publish to a dropbox, google drive, Microsoft one drive, Amazon web, or iCloud drive folder and have that folder shared with your family so the images automatically show up on their machines or mobile devices. Alternatively simply publish the images to Facebook using the built-in Facebook publish plugin into an album shared with your family members only. Simple and easy to use and the family will love it.

That seems to work for me for the same thing. Lightroom is just way to opaque for them to even consider some kind of shared solution. They like Apple Photos, Facebook or instagram. Anything more complex and it is just not worth the effort.

C

ChromeAce

Participant

There actually is a way to host your Library files on any NAS. From macOS, use Disk Utility to create a new volume image on the NAS. You will have to mount it and unmount it, but Lr will see it as a normal drive. When you mount it, another use of the NAS won't be able to mount it while you have it open. This is a good thing as it will protect your Library from being corrupted from simultaneous access. When unmounted, the volume simply appears on the NAS as a single file.

The downside to this is that any small change to any file within the Library will show the entire volume as changed and will trigger a full backup of that SparseImage file. (if you have automatic backups going from your NAS). This could be problematic if that file becomes large enough to take days to back up.

selondon

Community Expert

I have nowhere near that many images but Lightroom Mobile and Web are pretty good for Sharing my family photos.

Jusr Click Share and it gives you a Web Link for that Collection that others can view and download.

The only problem is that oniy Smart Previews are synced from the desktop app.

Their should be a way of sharing the whole catalog though with a limited number of people as long as they have an Adobe ID, with the option of read only.

N

nutmix5Author

Inspiring

selondon wrote:
Jusr Click Share and it gives you a Web Link for that Collection that others can view and download.
The only problem is that oniy Smart Previews are synced from the desktop app.

Thanks Selondon. The missing piece here is I have more than 2000 collections, how should I send my family 2000 links? For some bazar reason, Adoble have not kept the collection hearch or any searchable tags with their publication system, rendering it useless for browsing and searching. The web link is great for say sending low quality images of one event, but not good if they want to find an event from 10 years ago or one picture out of a million. The other problem is that the bulk of my photos are not in a collection, and these are the ones friends and family want to see. And its a LOT of photos. It would take months or years to upload that much.

D.A.R

Legend

It seems to me the problem was created when you changed your workflow. Pre Lr your images were on the NAS. Now they are on your Laptop HD.

Put the images back on the NAS. Use Lightroom to edit them on your Laptop (use smart previews if you want to edit while not connected)

Use the NAS for browsing and sharing and downloading for other members of your family. Most NAS systems have this functionality built it - WD / Synology etc.

The permissions family members have regarding sharing and downloading is a NAS setting not Lightroom. Since the images are viewed via a browser they can be be viewed by anyone you give access to. The NAS developers also have apps for mobile devices. Images can be downloaded or not based on your settings.

Ultimately this gives you full control of what is viewable by your family and when it is viewable. You can give them access to RAW files or just jpg versions. Your choice. Family can search via tags (keywords) provide you write them to the files in Lightroom (Cmd + S)

N

nutmix5Author

Inspiring

D.A.R wrote:
It seems to me the problem was created when you changed your workflow. Pre Lr your images were on the NAS. Now they are on your Laptop HD.

Once you go SSD, you never go back! The 6TB Synology Raid 5 NAS failed twice completely loosing all my data, images, and backups. It was incredibly slow (20MB) compared with SSD (500MB). 10 years ago, I could not fit my photos on my laptop, but since 5 years ago when I got a lenovo W520 with 2x1TB SSD, I could. Back then I was using photoshop for everything, so everything was exposed.

I could share my local photo directory read only, but this would not have any of the editing I have done, none of the vital keywording and collections. I could always export my edited collections to local disk, and share that too, but its a tedious manual process, and I would have to remember to re-export each time I added or changed anything in a collection, and there would be none of the essential search keywords exposed. Anyone looking for photos would always have to look in two places, the huge bulk of original pics, then the smaller set of edited pics in a completely different directory structure.

It seems that there is not alternative yet for this - everything has to be exported out of and away from light room to be useful by anyone else (except for a very small subset of "published" to web collections), which is a huge shame. The gigs of digital images are "locked up". I the old days, all my images were in slides or printed in 5x7, and I have probably tens of thousands of these in hundreds of albums which my family and friends can browse any time. But only a tiny fraction of the photos have taken digitally in the last 20 years is available, (perhaps 20,000) of images I have had time to export and publish to facebook or my professionally website.

D.A.R

Legend

So put SSD drives in your NAS.

If you think your ssd drives on the laptop can't or won't fail you are mistaken.

What were you using before Lightroom?

Why did you switch without verifying it fit in your workflow?

Why would you expect Lr to accommodate you when you are looking for it to do something it is not designed to do.?

Lightroom isn't perfect and there are several areas I'd like to see improved but to label it as the killer of the family photo sharing is a bit harsh.

Your unwillingness to store your image in a location other than a mobile non network (by default) drive is the major block I see for the implementation of what you desire.

Just Shoot Me

Legend

First off your images aren't LOCKED in LR. In fact no images are ever really IN LR. LR is a Database program and your images are Referenced from where they are stored on your hard drive into the LR Database file, the catalog file.

You can still keep your images on your NAS and reference them into the LR catalog file. That is the point of LR. Images can be stored on any drive your computer has access to, except Cloud storage with no local files and even then it might be possible (something I would never do or try so I have no fist hand knowledge of doing something like that).

You can still view the images, depending on what type they are, with the built in photo viewer apps that come with the operating system.

I think you are missing the point of LR and how LR works and how to work with LR.

Sure if you only shoot RAW and never export JPG images then only programs that can read RAW image data can view/display those images. And if they are stored on just your notebook that other family members don't have LAN access to then they can view them.

But if you placed them on the NAS and in a format, JPG, that can be viewed by many apps anyone that has access to the NAS can view them.

N

nutmix5Author

Inspiring

@Just shoot me. Yes, they are locked in, in that the edited photos and their tags and structure only "exist" in LR catalog, they dont exist anywhere accessible by anyone else. What we need is a way into this single user only system which doesn't involve manual labor and a poor solution.

Yes the originals could be on a NAS, but they are not, they are on my laptop SSD. Even if I wasted the time and effort manually duplicating the originals onto a NAS drive, noone would have access to the "good" edited versions. Yes, I could tediously manually export edited photos to an external HD, then hand this to my family, but then how would they know if they should look on the exported "edited" photo collection Drive, or the massive, crappy, unedited photo collection drive? Also, they would have no access to the tag search and other essential features locked in the catalog.

Just Shoot Me

Legend

Your image files are not LOCKED in LR. Not sure where you got, get that from.

Well no matter what image editing program you use until you save the edits to the file, with LR that is Exporting it, no one has access to the final version of the image. And if you don't copy or place those saved/exported images on a drive/system your family has access to then no one can view them but you.

This is not Lightroom's doing. The same thing would happen if you stored all your images on your notebook SSD and used Bridge > ACR > PS to edit them. Until you place them on some drive or system your family has acces to no one but you can view them.

So what you are asking for is something like Google Picasa or whatever it is called now. That is if it actually synced with some type of cloud system. You couldn't do what you want with Apple Photos (or iPhoto), Aperture.

Actually you can sync with LR mobile and access those synced images from any web browser.

B

Bill Sprague

Community Expert

I have only a couple thousand invested in gear, about 50,000 images and have never made a USA nickel. Yet I share some of your feelings about easy ways of having friends and family have access to my images.

Have you explored some of the "mobile" features included with your CC subscription? Only yesterday did I learn there is an opportunity to have an online, automated portfolio based on collections. Adobe has a "myportfolio.com" you can use.

Adobe's Terry White explains some of it here: Lightroom Web New Features - YouTube

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nutmix5Author

Inspiring

@whsprague

Thanks for your suggestion about the portfolio. I see how this could be useful for publishing your "finished articles", but it does not help your family view your finished photos and the terabytes of un-edited un-finished photos because you are 6 years behind in editing family shots.

Also, the family would want to have the high resolution originals for makign photobooks, printing and editing themselves, rather than have to download the highly compressed version used by adobe.com sharing.

Also, if they want to grab a whole album (e.g. I have weddings with 3000 edited shots) over the internet it would take hours if not days, when the source is on my gigabit lan right next to them.

There is a missing piece of the puzzle - a way for local users to view your catalog, and idealy get images locally. Sharing 1.5TB of images just for your family to browse is not the best solution. I dont think it gives them access to the tags and search etc. which is still locked in the catalog.

B

Bill Sprague

Community Expert

So what you are trying to say is you want a multiuser version of Lightroom? And, it should have a control account that sets or limits users ability to change things.

JP Hess

Inspiring

I don't understand why you feel your images are locked onto that laptop. You can export copies of your images and put them anywhere you want to. If you are using Lightroom CC you can create collections of images that can be shared via Lightroom mobile on Apple or android mobile devices or by having people go to Lightroom.adobe.com.

N

nutmix5Author

Inspiring

Hi, Lightroom mobile is useless as a viewer because it lets the viewer delete and/or accidentaly edit your photos. E.g. If I let me children use the mobile app on their pads, as they constantly ask to see them but I just have to say no, they will certainly accidental delete or ruin them.

It is a HUGE missed opportunity for Adobe not to make a mobile app with a read only mode.

The other issue is I would have to actively upload my 1.5TB of photos up to Adobe.com just for my family to then download the images when they are on the same network as my laptop.

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