LR Web Gallery Hosting: Still Possible With Dropbox? Other Host?

[John Caldwell]

Do any of you host web galleries with your Dropbox account? If so, how? If not with Dropbox, how do you host, and share, web galleries produced in LR?

For years I successfully hosted web galleries published from Lightroom using my Dropbox Public folder. It was as simple as placing the gallery parent folder within the Dropbox Public folder, sharing the URL to the gallery's Index.html file, and any recipient of that link would view the gallery in the intended way.

That capacity is now gone from Dropbox, near as I can tell. Dropbox tech support tells me that's the case, and I certainly haven't been able to workaround.

Is LR mobile of any use in sharing image collections? Forgive my ignorance, as I am very reliant on LR, but use it only in the desktop computer context.

Many thanks,

John Caldwell

[Alan Goldhammer]

I took the hard road only because I wanted to learn HTML coding and create a website.  I started with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to set up the site and then created the galleries with LR (I think it was version 3 at the time).  I had to recode the LR generated pages so that I could have menu buttons and some other stuff on the pages.  Website is hosted by GoDaddy who had reasonable prices when I was shopping around.  After a while Dreamweaver got funky about uploading pages so I moved to 'free' Filezilla to do all the uploading management.  I never felt a need to upgrade Dreamweaver.  I also remember looking at a number of more simple turnkey systems for gallery creation but given my intellectual curiosity about learning to create a gallery did not select one of them.  My current setup works fine and when I get a rare client job I can just create the gallery with LR and upload with Filezilla and send the URL on.

[john beardsworth]

If you have a subscription, John, you might want to look into the Portfolio web site that comes with it. There is some integration with Lightroom, you don't need to know much to use it, but it's a decent way to publish a basic web site.

Also with the subscription, you can share collections online. These are more suitable for sharing pictures with family and friends, so there's less choice of formatting but they work better for larger sets of images and are easier to update (edit a pic in LR and it is automatically updated online).

Did you know of these options (if they're relevant to you)?

[JeanMichel]

If you do not mind the annual cost (about CDN$300 or less), Zenfolio works very well. Designing a site on it is fairly easy and they provide excellent support. I post my client images in password-protected galleries, anything from proofs to final cmyk files for press production.

Jean-Michel 

[rdonson]

Another option worth considering might be SmugMug . https://www.smugmug.com/

[John Caldwell]

Thanks you for all the good responses and suggestions.

I'd really like to stick with the galleries we can create in Lightroom. The Zenfolio pages I've seen look good, but I sense it's learning some proprietary product from the start. Maybe I'm more closed than I should dbe.

Learning HTML code isn't in the cards, so if John Beardsworth suggestion allows me, as a CC subscriber, to host galleries on the Portfolio website, that sounds good. I couldn't follow the Portfolio link John shared, so I'm intensely ignorant. John, is this a serve we have with Adobe subscriptions, or is it a different subscription?

Thanks to all,

John Caldwell

[myotis]

Thanks you for all the good responses and suggestions.

I'd really like to stick with the galleries we can create in Lightroom.

Learning HTML code isn't in the cards, so if John Beardsworth suggestion allows me, as a CC subscriber, to host galleries on the Portfolio website, that sounds good.
John Caldwell

You might find this useful

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/files/2016/04/CreatingYourAdobePortfolio-1.pdf

I don't use Portfolio yet, but its free as part of your CC subscription. However, I don't believe there are any links between Lightroom classic CC, and portfolio.  Only with Lightroom CC, where you can share albums with portfolio.

But I could be wrong.

Cheers,
Graham

[john beardsworth]

That link should work, John, but I'll explain a little more about how Portfolio fits in.

You may know that when you sync photos from Lightroom, small versions or "smart previews" are uploaded to Adobe's server. From there, the photos can be accessed by various Adobe tools covered by your Photography Plan subscription:

• Lightroom Mobile iOS/Android apps
• Lightroom Web which let you access the photos via a browser
• Portfolio, Slate and some other web and iOS/Android apps from the wider Creative Cloud

To try the Lightroom-to-Portfolio workflow, I'll assume you know how to sync a collection of photos in LR. Right click this collection in LR and choose Go To > Private Link. This opens a browser and takes you to your Lightroom Web account. Now "Share" this collection (link at top) and choose the Portfolio option. Your Portfolio page opens and you can choose things like layout and add text - no need to use HTML or anything.

Once you are in Portfolio, you can add extra collections pretty easily. Here I'd suggest taking a look at Julieanne Kost's posts on Portfolio at http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/tag/portfolio , and notice the latest post describing "integrations". This is quite handy. Imagine you put a gallery on Dropbox as before, but changed some pictures - you'd need to output the whole gallery again. Portfolio was initially like that, but they recently added a button to refresh ("reset") the collection - that's the "integration" stuff.

[john beardsworth]

I don't use Portfolio yet, but its free as part of your CC subscription. However, I don't believe there are any links between Lightroom classic CC, and portfolio.  Only with Lightroom CC, where you can share albums with portfolio.

But I could be wrong.

You're not wrong. The Lightroom Classic route to Portfolio is via Lightroom Web, but that's no big deal and you don't need to bother with the new "Lightroom CC". Probably best if you don't!

[myotis]

You're not wrong. The Lightroom Classic route to Portfolio is via Lightroom Web, but that's no big deal and you don't need to bother with the new "Lightroom CC". Probably best if you don't!

Thanks John, 

Lightroom CC is not something I have much interest in, but I do plan to have a go with Portfolio, and had assumed there would be a more obvious upload process from Classic to Portfolio, as there is with other online providers like say Flikr not that I've used that either :-)

Cheers,

Graham

[John Caldwell]

Again, thanks to John and all participants. I'll digest and come up to speed on the Portfolio option.

John Caldwell

[Wayne Fox]

I recently switched from ZenFolio to PhotoDeck.  Zenfolio decided to charge a commission on all sales included self fulfilled.  The percentage might make sense for someone selling reprints from weddings etc. but not for someone selling higher end pieces, they just don't do enough to justify a several hundred dollar commission on a single piece.

Photodeck pricing lists were easier to set up.  On balance there are a few things I like less and some things I like better than ZenFoiio.
They offer a plugin which can sync a collection in your library to the gallery. 

I think ZenFolio also has a similar plugin.

I have seen some really nice sites done with Portfolio, but it doesn't offer an online store option if thats something you want or might want in the future.