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B
Benito Aramando
Participating Frequently
February 20, 2018
Answered

Lightroom creates duplicates when republishing to Flickr

  • February 20, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 2931 views

When you make any changes to a photo that is included in a set that has been published to Flickr it moves from the "Published Photos" section to the "Modified Photos to Republish" section. When the set is published these are supposed to update the existing image on Flickr (as per this page: How to publish photos from Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC to Adobe Stock and social media), but Lightroom just re-uploads it, creating a duplicate on Flickr (albeit with the updated version of the image). I have just updated to the latest version of LR Classic, 7.2, to no avail.

    Correct answer dj_paige

    When the set is published these are supposed to update the existing image on Flickr

    I don't really see where it says that. But you have to have a Flickr Pro account to be allowed to replace existing photos.

    4 replies

    A
    alexr15
    Participating Frequently
    September 8, 2024

    In the process of investigating and fixing this issue, I created several python scripts.

    I've shared them in a github repo:

    https://github.com/photography-tools/lightroom-flickr-duplication-issue

      B
      b9dazzle@gmail.com
      Participant
      March 14, 2022

      I am getting the photos to be republished in Flickr.  There are 55 photos I have not touched in years.  I have a pro account and contacted them, they said it was a bug in adobe.   I talked to adobe tech support  they told tme to edit settings then leave as is.   so this is the second time in a couple months,  I am running the current version of  Lightroom classic and Windows did an update right before this happened.

       

        stewartr43936066
        stewartr43936066
        Participating Frequently
        October 4, 2018

        I have now started to get this issue. I have a Pro account and have been able to update images with no issues but I am now getting dupes every time I republish. I don't think it started right after the Mojave upgrade but I do't recall it before wither. Anyone have any thoughts as I am at a standstill ATM.

        Additional - I have just been back to take  look at some earlier uploads and it was happening before the Mojave update. It seems that any image that is updated creates a new version.

        S

          R
          Rogerhollingsworth
          Inspiring
          November 30, 2021

          I have the same issue.

           

            dj_paige
            dj_paigeCorrect answer
            Legend
            February 20, 2018

            When the set is published these are supposed to update the existing image on Flickr

            I don't really see where it says that. But you have to have a Flickr Pro account to be allowed to replace existing photos.

            DClark064
            DClark064
            Inspiring
            April 22, 2024

            This is marked as the "Correct answer" but I think this answer is not correct. I have a PRO account and I am finding that edits to photos that get re-published create duplicates, and triplicates, etc, etc.  It's a mess!  Flickr support says they are working with Adobe to correct this problem, and they say the Flickr publish module is Adobe's responsibility.   Why is this not a BUG instead of an item in Discussions?

            A
            alexr15
            Participating Frequently
            September 5, 2024
            quote

            "any character that is not valid unescaped inside a Lua string", what characters are these?

             

            Potentially non-printables such as tab, newline, etc, and malformed utf-8 encodings. I have not tested any of these.

            I also tested backslash (\) but it does not appear to cause problems, which is surprising.

            quote

            My plugin is set to use the IPTC Title, and when updating to replace the existing title.

             

            I just did a quick test with your settings. Indeed, the double-quote is transmitted intact to Flickr!

            So it is pretty easy now to replicate the duplication problem starting with an empty set, without leaving Lightroom:

            1. Create a new Album in the Flickr Publish Service

            2. Add a single photo to the Album

            3. Set the title to any text containing double-quotes (")

            4. Hit Publish

            5. Tweak the photo and Hit Publish again.

            6. Check Flickr account, you're guaranteed to see a duplicate.

            7. Repeat Step 5, now you have 2 duplicates. Rinse and repeat for as many duplicates as desired.

             

            If the Album has less than 500 photos, any other photos will also get duplicated, even if they don't contain a double-quote in the title.


            quote

            I also tested backslash (\) but it does not appear to cause problems, which is surprising.

             

            Alas, the backslash is not completely safe. It'll cause the same cascading failure, if it's the last character in the title.

            I realized this while thinking about the plugin code, and confirmed it by testing with a fresh set, a single photo, and "Set Flickr Title Using: IPTC Title."

             

            There could be additional characters that are problematic. At this point my patience has run out, so I'm not going to try to identify all the different failure triggers. I just wrote a script to nuke the title on every photo in the LR-managed Flickr Album, and I changed my plugin settings to overwrite the title with a simple timestamp on future exports.

             

            I'm finally able to sync and re-sync a set of 2,500 photos without triggering this problem.

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