Can photos be stored and accessible to more than one user using Adobe Lightroom on Adobe cloud

[davecstlbsa#312]

We are a not-for-profit organization that would like to store edited photos with person, place, and activity tags on the Adobe cloud.  We are accustomed to using Lightroom, but I would not consider us as being proficient.  Volunteers having their own Adobe cloud account would need access to the photos with edits and tags.  Is this possible?

[Jao vdL]

This is only possible through a web browser if you use the Abobe cloud thing and even then the access is limited. You might be better off using Lightroom Classic and setting up an export collection that exports to a cloud service such as dropbox, onedrive, icloud, google drive etc. You will only be able to edit the keywords and such on one machine but it would be accessible to anybody even people without a Adobe account. It might even be easier to just use Apple Photos with a shared album or google photos doing the same. Those are simple to use and do the keyword and person place thing for you. Much less powerful image editing but it sounds like you don't really need that at all.

[Jim Wilde]

This is only possible through a web browser if you use the Abobe cloud thing and even then the access is limited.

I disagree, Jao. As the OP and their volunteers all have their own account it is easily possible to create a shared album in any of the Lightroom apps (it doesn't have to be just in the web browser). So the "owner" sets up the album, then enables it for sharing, and ensures the appropriate share settings are checked (e.g. allow downloads, show metadata, show location info, allow comments & likes). Then send an invitation to each of the volunteers (and it's even possible to allow the recipients to contribute their own images to the album), and once the email notification has been received and accepted the recipient will see that album appear in all of their Lightroom apps in the Shared With You section. They can thus view the associated metadata and location data, download jpegs, comment/like as appropriate. At this stage only the "owner" can edit any of the images, though of course any such edits would be seen by all the other invitees. The "owner" can also edit any images added to the album by any of the invitees. Absolutely no need to faff around with any of the other cloud services, simply use the system that they're all paying for.

[Jao vdL]

Hi Jim, I don't disagree at all. That is why I wrote "This is only possible through a web browser if you use the Abobe cloud thing and even then the access is limited." You have to do this through a webbrowser. The original post sounded like they wanted to use the Lightroom application on all the accessors' computers or devices. That cannot be done. You have to go through a browser. You also cannot download originals this way (only jpeg copies) and you cannot edit keywords and titles etc. which is where my "limited" comment came from. If this works for people - great! This is a solution for you.

Other cloud service solutions such as Apple Photos, Google Photos and such allow you to share an album or set of albums and those can then be collaboratively edited and originals are available. You can also more granularly limit access if you need. It realy depends on what the needs are what is the better solution. Right now, Lightroom does not allow a fully collaborative cloud solution. It's likely coming from some public statements I've seen (and would be really interesting!) but not here yet.

[Jim Wilde]

You have to do this through a webbrowser. The original post sounded like they wanted to use the Lightroom application on all the accessors' computers or devices. That cannot be done. You have to go through a browser.

Jao, this functionality is no longer restricted to a web browser, it most definitely can be done using any of the Lightroom apps, if the accessors have their own cloud acount (which according to the OP they do). Share an album by invitation to other users (share in this case can be from either Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Mobile, or Lightroom Web, but not Classic) and once the invitation has been accepted the accessor will see the album in the "Shared with You" section of all 3 apps. In fact, some of this functionality is available to non-subscribers, provided they have an Adobe ID. 

The only part of this system that needs a browser is when accepting the invitation, which is sent by email. On receipt of the email the invitee clicks on the click which opens a window in a browser and automatically triggers the invitation acceptance.

I've also seen those public statements, so I'm hopeful that things will get even better in due course.

[Jao vdL]

Awesome! I didn't know you can now do that in the app too. Must have missed that in the announcements. Can you do any metadata edits or is it read only when an album is shared with you? 

[Jim Wilde]

At the moment only the owner of the album can edit (both edits and metadata) all the images in the album, including contributed images from the other accessors, but the invitees can see the metadata and any edits, and can export full-size jpegs.