LR5 Publishing Svs & CiC Image links

[terrib]

For posting pictures to CiC, I recently switched from using the TinyPic upload method to using the Publishing Services in Lightroom. I publish to Picasa Webs/Google and then get the link and embed it in my post. I use a plugin by Jeffrey Friedl which can be found HERE. (He also has them for other services such as SmugMug, PhotoBucket, etc.) I chose Picasa because I share most of my pictures with family through Google+. Many times, photos that I'm posting on CiC are the same ones I'm sharing on Google so by using this method I only have to upload to one place and it's much more automated. I have Smart Albums set up for different types of photos, i.e. Wildlife in Colorado, Wildlife in Texas, Landscapes in Colorado, etc. The Smart Albums key off of keywords such as wildlife, landscape etc to put them in the right folder. They all require the keyword Google. Since I have the names of all the G+ Communities and CiC as child keywords under the parent keyword of Google, then by using those child keywords I can keep up with where I have posted my photos.

There are only 2 disadvantages that I've found so far to this method. First, although the metadata is with the picture on Picasa, it does not carry over to the post on CiC. And second, if you modify a picture, it automatically gets put in a queue to be republished and it replaces the original picture. This means that if you've posted a link in CiC to a picture and people make comments which lead you to reprocess, the original picture will be replaced with the update causing the original conversation to not apply to the picture now showing. So to keep this from happening, you need to make changes to a copy or virtual copy. This is the way it works with Picasa and links from CiC. I'm not sure if other publish services work the same. I know that if you share a post in Google+, republishing a modification later does NOT affect the previous posts.

Anyway, I don't remember seeing much conversation about how people used the LR publishing services so I just thought I'd share what I've found so far. I think it's pretty slick.

[DanK]

Terri,

I do the same thing you do, but with Smugmug as my primary host. I am confused by what you wrote:

if you modify a picture, it automatically gets put in a queue to be republished and it replaces the original picture.

If you modify it where? In Lightroom? If so, I don't understand what is happening. I have used Friedl's smugmug and Flickr plugins for several years, and they have never maintained any kind of queue. They only operate when I select an image in LR and select "export," then the plugin.

However, if you mean that you are using Picasa and replace your original there with a modified picture, then yes, I think that will change what shows up in CiC. Maybe one of the moderators can weigh in, but I don't think CiC independently hosts linked images. I just went to an old post of mine, right clicked on an image, and it gave me the option of copying or going to the link. If that is how CiC works, then if you post via linking to a primary site, you will have to keep the original image on the primary site if you want it to remain on CiC. You would have to upload a revised photo to your primary site in addition to the original if you want both to show up. This would have to be a real image, not a virtual copy. virtual copies are not additional images--they are just Lightroom showing you a second copy of one file.

Dan

[terrib]

thanks Dan for your comments. To answer your questions...

Yes, I'm talking about if I modify the photo in Lightroom. The way the Picasa Plugin works is this. In Library Module, in the left panel, if I choose a folder under the Picasa Publish Services, then what displays (in grid mode) are the pictures that are to be published or have been published. The display is broken up into 3 possible sections 1) Published Photos 2) New Photos to be Published 3) Modified Photos to be Published. I click the Publish button at the top of the grid to send them to Picasa.

Any Modified Photos replace the same photo at Picasa - therefore any place that I've linked to that photo, like Cic, will see the new modified photo. Any New Photo, of course, will go to new locations at Picasa. So if I want to keep 2 versions of the same photo, I would need to create a copy to modify so it doesn't replace the old one. The interesting thing is that in the test I did yesterday, creating a Virtual Copy and then modifying it put that modified version in the "New Photos to be Published" queue so it did not replace the original at Picasa. I think it was pretty smart to design the plugin that way.

[DanK]

Terri,

Thanks. Now I understand. I don't use Picasaweb, so I had not encountered this. I use Friedl's plugins almost entirely to publish to the web, and they do nothing automatically. I prefer that.

Dan