Last calendar week, nosotros talked almost exporting photos from Lightroom when you need to do something with those photos exterior of Lightroom.

Did yous know that you can post photos to Facebook from within Lightroom?  No exporting required.  Same goes for Flickr, Smugmug, Shutterfly, Dropbox, Costco's photo lab and more than!

Each of these services has a slightly different setup.  I'one thousand going to walk you through the Shutterfly process to give yous a general overview.  The others will be similar enough that you tin figure them out based on this example.  Simply remember that at that place are at least 4 steps for each service:

  1. Download and install the plugin
  2. Create a connection between Lightroom and the online service, which usually requires logging in to that website from inside Lightroom. Configure the upload settings from Lightroom to this service.
  3. Add together photos to the publish folder
  4. Publish the photos

Are you fix? In Lightroom'southward Library module, look for the Publish Services Panel in the lesser left corner.  Click on Find More Services Online.

This will take you to Adobe'southward webpage, where you volition click the button for Publish Drove.

Look through the available services, and click on the Download button for the ane you want.  Clicking on the Download button for Shutterfly takes me to Don McKee'south website.

He is a respected name in the Lightroom community, and then I consider it a trustworthy site to download from.  And while he makes the download available for gratis, y'all practice have the opportunity to purchase him a beer.  I donated – totally worth it, in my stance!

Read through the downloading and installation instructions, then install the plugin into Lightroom.  Think to look in your Downloads folder if you lot can't observe the file after downloading.

To install information technology, get to the Consign dialog box in Lightroom by correct clicking on a photograph and selecting Export.  Click on Plug-in Manager, and then Add.

When prompted, navigate to the file you downloaded.  I got a quick message telling me that the itemize would be updated.  And and then this cheers message.

Now, returning to the Library module, I come across that Shutterfly has been added to my Publish Services, with a reminder that I need to gear up my service.  I click on information technology.

This window prompts me to Authenticate the plug-in, by logging into my business relationship at Shutterfly.  For whatsoever reason, I got an fault bulletin from Shutterfly afterwards logging in, which repeated itself each time I tried.  I came back a couple of hours later, and everything worked only fine.  This is what Shutterfly showed me after logging in successfully.

I go this confirmation message. Subsequently clicking OK on this bulletin, scroll down this Shutterfly set-up screen and tweak default file names, output sharpening, albums to upload into, etc.   Brand sure to click the Save button at the bottom of the set window before leaving.

Ok, at present that we're set upwards, how exercise y'all go your photos onto Shutterfly?  Honestly, information technology'southward non very intuitive.  Just here's what you do.

In your Library Module, highlight the photos that you want to upload to Shutterfly.

Click on the pointer next to the words "Shutterfly Upload" to open the panel.  It volition show you the album that you specified in your setup.  Right click on this album and select "Add Selected Photos."  You can double click on this album name to change it, or to associate it with a specific anthology that you've already set upwardly on Shutterfly.

Now, click the Publish button at the lesser of this panel.

You'll see a progress bar at the superlative left of your screen.  And, if y'all configured your setup similar I did, your Shutterfly business relationship will open up and so that y'all tin can confirm that the photos uploaded successfully.

Equally you add new photos to this Shutterfly drove, y'all'll see that LR shows you which have been published and which haven't.

As for Facebook, the Lightroom publish service is very like, except that Lightroom has already installed it for you.  Y'all do still demand to brand the connection between Lightroom and your Facebook account, however.

The problem with the congenital-in FB plug-in is that it merely exports to personal pages rather than to fan or business pages.  Nevertheless, there is a plug-in created past Jeffrey Friedl that will upload directly to your Facebook fan page.  I installed this plugin today and played with it briefly.  It worked!  It looks like this, later installation:

The settings for information technology are quite long and a scrap complicated.  I'm sure they have to be long and complicated to work around Facebook's structure.  I definitely need to play with it more, but information technology seems to be a great tool at showtime glance.  This 1 does require a donation (of any amount) if y'all'd like to use all its features longer than 40 days.

So why apply Lightroom's Publish Services rather than exporting a photograph and and so going to Facebook or Shutterfly and uploading from there? First off, this should save you lot time, after y'all install, configure and learn the plug-in.  More than importantly, yous'll save hard bulldoze space considering you aren't creating separate files on your computer as you do when yous export from Lightroom.  So give it a try.  Lightroom's Publish Services might expect intimidating at first, but they aren't bad one time you get used to them.