Lightroom Extras
Plugins and other tools to enhance Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and above.
Lightroom Plugins
| Elemental plugin |
Helps Photoshop Elements version 6 onwards to work seamlessly with Lightroom, similarly to the native integration between Lightroom and Photoshop. Enables Lightroom to launch Photoshop Elements directly into photo merge (panoramas), open photos as layers, create smart objects, and start various features with a single click. |
| Export Backup plugin | Adds a post-process action to backup rendered images generated during an export. These are discarded for many export services. |
| LR Backup plugin | Allows you to backup Lightroom’s configuration files, and compress catalog backups, from within Lightroom itself. |
| Metadata Panels plugin | Extends the Metadata section within Lightroom’s Library module with 8 new pre-defined metadata layouts (tagsets). These help users focus on the important metadata when performing key tasks such as managing copyright and model releases for their digital assets. |
| Snapshotter plugin (LR3 and above) |
Creates snapshots of the current develop settings for all selected photos in a single step. Snapshots capture a permanent record of an image’s current develop settings and can be accessed from the Snapshots panel on the left hand side of the Develop module. |
| Test Harness plugin | Helps Lightroom plugin developers by providing menu items to execute and generate standalone plugins from LUA scripts. |
Lightroom Scripts
| LRRelaunch script |
Helps users quickly relaunch Lightroom with the current catalog. Particularly useful for Lightroom plugin or web gallery developers and anyone who encounters performance issues that can be worked around by restarting Lightroom. |
Miscellaneous
| TTG Client Script | Converts TTG Client Response Gallery, TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro gallery selection emails into smart collections that can be imported into Lightroom. |
Plugin Installation
To install a plugin:
- Download the plugin’s zip file.
- Copy the zip file where you want the plugin to permanently reside, then unzip the file. This should create a sub-directory called
.lrplugin . - Open Lightroom, then select the File -> Plugin Manager menu option.
- Press the Add button, select the
.lrplugin directory created in step 2, then press OK. - The plugin is now installed and enabled. Press Done.
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Hi,
I have installed the latest config backup plugin for LR2 and I was wondering…
Should I have both the Configuration files backup and the LightRoom Automatic backup set configured to save to the same folder on my External HD?
Does the LightRoom Automatic backup save to both a compressed and an uncompressed directory or is compression a feature of your plugin? If so does your plug-in automatically compress the files or must it be set to do so?
Thanks.
A quick summary of the discussion we had over at Lightroomforums.net. Given you are using Mac OSX and have Time machine backing up your main system, having the Config Backups, Lightroom’s inbuilt catalog backups, and the compressed versions of those catalog backups all going to the same (RAID 1) external HDD seems reasonable. I would recommend taking occasional backups to optical media as an extra safety precaution though.
The uncompressed directory needs to be set to where the Lightroom inbuilt catalog backups end up. The plugin will then copy or move (depending upon the settings) those backups to zips in the compressed files directory. You must call up the plugin (via one of its items in the File -> Plugin Extras menu) to trigger the compression of backups. Adobe hasn’t documented any SDK hook to allow me to do this without user intervention.
Hope this clears everything up.
hi matt…. firstly, thanks for creating this plug in & making it available for everyone. there’s not enough people out there like you giving selflessly to the online community out here.
i’ve run into a problem though – i’m trying to find a way to archive shots from each of my jobs to 2 separate external hard drives in 1 click.
i’ve managed to work out how to do this by re-importing all of the files i’ve processed back into lightroom & then in the export dialogue window having the “file settings” tab locked to process the files as “original”, thereby copying them across to 1 external drive without changing the original file format. i’ve then set your “export back up” location to copy the same files to the other external drive. this works fine & that’s great, except for the following issue:
having re-imported those files into lightroom so that the catalog includes files i’ve retouched in photoshop, as well as storyboards i’ve created; when i run this plug in, it won’t recognise the individual folders & sub folders i’ve created & therefore throws everything into the one folder. although this is better than nothing, i’d rather be able to archive individual files into the subfolders i’d created for them.
is there any way of forcing the lightroom export process to recognise individual folders & sub folders when processing & archiving?
thanks in advance,
craig
@Craig, I’m assuming you are referring to the export backup plugin here.
The quickest way to backup to a second HDD would probably be a scheduled job running in the background. e.g. I use SyncBackSE for all my validated transfers. If you read The DAM Book it is even advisable to let software like this copy/move files between HDD because it can verify the files are a bit for bit copy of the original files.
But taking the question at face value there is no way to force Lightroom’s export to copy to multiple destinations, or to maintain part or all of the folder structure when writing to disk. The export dialog always assumes you are writing to a single directory or the original directory the file existed in.
Some plugins do exist (e.g. Tree Exporter) that try to work around these limitations. YMMV. I’ve considered adding some of this functionality to Export Backup but that has been put on the back burner for the moment. One other possible change I’ve considered is allowing more than one Export Backup post process action to be included in a single export dialog. You could then write to both HDD at once though that would still be to a single output directory.
Hope this helps.
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Matt — i’ve been using Elemental for a month as freeware but i just donated and got a code. But i cant’ figure out what to do with it? Nothing prompts for a code, it just says i need to donate. ???
@Eric, Thanks! The registration code goes in the Plug-in Manager dialog. On Windows you open the File -> Plug-in Manager menu item. Select the TPG Elemental plugin in the list. There is a registration section in TPG Elemental’s details and there is a field there for you to enter your code.
If you have both Elemental and TPG Elemental plugins installed, TPG Elemental is the one that will accept the code. In that case you need to make sure TPG Elemental is enabled and Elemental (the older plugin version) disabled. You can tell if they are both installed from the Plug-in Manager’s plugin list.
thanks! it worked. I have TPG elemental
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