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

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

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.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Well maybe you both are privy to some inside information since you both talk with authority about how many other feature requests there are and the limited resources of the developers. I'm sure you can understand my assuming you must be company employees. I also know it's not unusual for employees to masquerade as users on company forums just as it's also common practice for companies to have shills who lurk the forums and keep discussions going in the right direction.

[Lee_Jay]

When I call my email client from the export screen, it doesn't embed the JPEG created into a new message or even into a message that's already been created. Thus I'm not sure that would work for all situations, John.

I'm surprised to hear from Victoria that this is so popular. Among average users, I'm the only person I know that even uses an email client. Everyone else uses web-based email, and as far as I know, drag-and-drop doesn't work there for any file source.

[john beardsworth]

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.

[Lee_Jay]

Hmmm...it doesn't work with Outlook and it doesn't work with Live Mail. I believe those two are pretty common.

[john beardsworth]

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.

[Lee_Jay]

Just calling Outlook with the export module.

[john beardsworth]

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.

[Lee_Jay]

Yep...Outlook opens but not with a new email message with the image as the attachment.

[ssprengel]

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?

[john beardsworth]

What if Outlook's already open? Any difference? Don't see why there should be, but....

[Lee_Jay]

If it's open and minimized, it pops up, but nothing happens at that point.

[john beardsworth]

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.

[Lee_Jay]

Hmmm...it is working in Office 2007 at work (I think I have 2010 at home) but not in Windows Live Mail in either location. Windows live mail is basically Outlook light.

?????

[john beardsworth]

"Windows live mail is basically Outlook light. " Dunno. I've never really bothered learning what it may be. The old Outlook Express?

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I'm pretty sure I saw a note somewhere about it not being updated for Windows Live Mail, but I could be wrong.

[johnrellis]

You need to pass the /a switch to Outlook to create a new message with an attachment:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/out...

Unfortunately, LR doesn't let you add parameters to the command line of an Export preset's After Export: Open In Other Application, so you'll need to create a batch file and use that as the application. The batch file contains one line:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OUTLOOK.EXE" /a %1

Of course, the path on your system may be different. I'm pretty sure the /a switch goes back many versions of Outlook (at least back to Outlook 2002).

[ssprengel]

If you add %2 %3 %4 %5, etc, to the end of the batch-file command line file does Outlook attach more than one image?

[johnrellis]

No, I think the /a switch is limited to one file and command line is limited to one occurrence of the /a switch. So I'd guess that if you want to attach more than one file, you'd need to use the MAPI plugin or write Windows Powershell script that talks directly to Outlook.

[DavidRitch]

It doesn't give you drag-and-drop, but I like this plugin: http://sbsutherland.com/index.php.

It exports the files to a temporary directory, and invokes your default mail client to send them. After they're sent, it (or your mailer) removes them. It's Windows-only, but it has worked well for me through a couple of generations of computers and versions of Windows.

[J453]

Lightroom 4: Direct Email from within Lightroom

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

• Configure your desktop mail client or AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail webmail accounts to send email from Lightroom
• Convenient size presets appropriate for email
• Address book to store commonly used email addresses

[areohbee]

A bit 1998, but hey - had to be done... 😉

[J453]

I think Tom used the same term - as the feature from the 1990's. In any case, there ya go.