Lightroom export question

jfriend

I have about 1000 softball images in a Lightroom collection all keyworded with a players name. The end goal is to get these 1000 images into a password protected gallery in Smugmug for each keyword (15 keywords go to 15 galleries) and sorted in Smugmug by the Lightroom rating. I'm looking for a more streamlined way of doing this than I've done in the past.

The manual labor way of doing this (that I've done before, but is a painful amount of tedious work) is as follows:

• Export them all fvom LR to one directory.
• Then let Adobe Bridge index all the JPEGs.
• Then create all the galleries on Smugmug (one for each keyword). I use StarExplorer for this.
• Then, one by one select each keyword in Bridge so you can see just the images with that keyword.
• Sort them by rating.
• Rename the files by appending a digit on the front of the filename (so that a future filename sort in Smugmug will also be a rating sort because Smugmug can't sort by rating).
• Drag these images to StarExplorer for the right gallery.
• Repeat this process 15 more times.
• Do giant upload.

Any better ideas for the Lightroom to Smugmug workflow. I can see all the images divided by keyword right in Lightroom. I just need a shortcut way to get them arranged that way in the filesystem so I can more easily upload them to Smugmug. Does Lightroom have any automation? Any scripting? Any programmability? Does lightroom have any ability to export according to a keyword hieararchy?

Those of you following the virtual gallery discussion can now see why I'd like Smugmug virtual galleries. I could just export all images to one directory. Upload all to one gallery and then define a virtual gallery for each keyword. Three steps instead of the zillions more described above.

BradfordBenn

I will need to think on this one a little bit, but why can't you do the rename as you export the photos? What I am envisioning is that you select by keyword, then select them and do an export with a custom file name (it does not rename the source file, just the output file). If I remember correctly, you can even have it append the rating to the file name using the Custom name option.

I think that what you are wanting to do can be done all in Lightroom. I am running on a Mac so I am not 100% of the output automation that is available on the Windows side (even though I run Star*Explorer for backing-up)

arodney

BradfordBenn wrote:

I will need to think on this one a little bit, but why can't you do the rename as you export the photos?

You can.

BradfordBenn

Okay using the "Custom Filename" options you can set lots of things. Go to the Custom Filename and select MetaData


From there you have two drop downs that will give you lots of options. You can get an idea from below...


or


So you can do some keyword filtering if you want and add the keyword manually. Included in there you can put the rating and sort by rating... etc.

Hope this helps.

jfriend

BradfordBenn wrote:

Okay using the "Custom Filename" options you can set lots of things. Go to the Custom Filename and select MetaData


From there you have two drop downs that will give you lots of options. You can get an idea from below...


or


So you can do some keyword filtering if you want and add the keyword manually. Included in there you can put the rating and sort by rating... etc.

Hope this helps.

Thanks. I see how to add the rating to the start of the exported filename. That will get me a Smugmug galllery sort by rating. I don't see how to do anything with keywords to separate out the exported images by keyword so it looks like I'm still stuck doing 15 separate exports or exporting and then re-indexing so I can sort by keyword again. This seems like something the Lightroom design team left out. You can do all this powerful categorization inside of Lightroom, but there's no powerful way to transfer it to an external organizational system like a file system directory hierarchy when you do an export. Every export apparently has to go to one directory.

I guess I'll have to export them all, then let Bridge index them so I can separate the exported files by keyword for separate gallery uploads to Smugmug. That's what I have been doing, it's just a lot more work than it seems like it should be when LR already has everything indexed. I was formerly sorting by rating inside of Bridge and renaming in that sorted order in Bridge to get rating sort - but now I can add the rating to the start of the filename in the export step and at least save one of my many steps. One down, many more to go.