Backup Your Rendered Images When Exporting From Lightroom 2 To The Web
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Update: A newer version of this plugin is now available. |
Today I’m publicly releasing my first Lightroom 2 plugin. Its a simple export post-process action that addresses an oversight in the Lightroom 2 export functionality – that there is no way to backup the images rendered while exporting from Lightroom to a web site. These images are generated, uploaded then discarded without giving the user any option to intervene and keep these images.
While it is possible to use the “Files on Disk” export service to achieve a similar result, I found this to be a cumbersome workflow. A second export is required to make up for the missing functionality, and this approach is error prone because you may not remember to reapply all of the same settings. Not to mention the time it takes to run the export and wait for it to re-render the files.
There are many reasons you might want to retain these files.
- If you have read and follow advice in Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers, you will be keeping copies of all derivative files you deliver to your clients.
- As a Lightroom user you are probably shooting photos using a raw format, and your family members might not be using image viewers that can cope with these formats.
- If you are anything like me you won’t want people in your household to download your photos from the web when they could quickly and easily copy them from your PC.
For these and other reasons I decided to write a plugin to fill this gap.
Installation
- Download the plugin: Latest version of Export Backup zip
- Copy the file where you want the plugin to permanently reside, then unzip the file. This should create a sub-directory called export-backup.lrplugin.
- Open Lightroom 2, then select the FilePlugin Manager menu option.
- Press the Add button, select the export-backup.lrplugin directory created in step 2, then press OK.
- The plugin is now installed and enabled. Press Done..
Usage
Next time you export files you will notice an Export Backup entry in the Export dialog’s Post-Process Actions list.
To use this feature:
- Select the Export Backup entry, then press the Insert button. Note: The Insert button will remain inactive if you select the wrong Export Backup entry. This will add an Export Backup section near the end of the Export dialog.
- Either manually enter or choose the directory where the rendered files should be copied.
- Select either Overwrite or Ignore option, depending upon how you want to proceed if the same files already exist in the destination directory.
- Continue with your file export as usual.
When you export your files to Flickr, Gallery 2 or whatever photo hosting service you use, you will now also have a local copy of the rendered output for your own records.
I hope you find this plugin useful and feel free to share your experiences or suggestions in the comments section below.
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In: Howto, Project, Software · Tagged with: backup, code, lightroom, lr2, plugin, Web, workflow