How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook

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This tutorial shows how to set up Lightroom for publishing your photos on Facebook. The process is similar for other photo sharing services such as Flickr or SmugMug. Once you edit your photos in Lightroom, possibly using MCP Quick Clicks Collection presets or even the free Mini Quick Clicks presets, you want to display your images on Facebook – right?  Here’s how.

First let’s get everything all set up.

1. Make sure you are working in the Library module. Click the Facebook button under the Publish Services panel in the left column, or double-click if you are editing an existing setup.

screen1 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

2. Click the Authorize on Facebook button.

screen2 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

 

3. A window will appear asking you to log into Facebook. Click OK, and your web browser will be launched showing a Facebook Log-in screen. Click the Log In button. You may close your browser after authorization is complete.

screen3 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

 

4. The Lightroom Publishing Manager window will now show that your account is authorized. You can leave the other options set to their defaults or change them to suit your preferences. If you’re not sure, you can always try the defaults and come back later to change them. The option most important to me is the ability to watermark your photos. If you have a watermark saved, go ahead and check that box, then select your watermark from the drop-down menu. More on creating watermarks will be covered in a separate tutorial.

 

5. Fill out the sizing and other information below. When you have finished selecting your options, click Save.

screen4 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

Now let’s publish some photos…

1. Again, make sure you are working in the Library module. Select the photos you wish to publish, then right-click the Facebook button under the Publish Services panel. Click Create Collection.

screen5 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

2. In the Create Collection window, enter a name for your photo collection under Name at the top of the window. (This is the name you will see appear in the Publish Services panel in Lightroom.) Enter an Album Name in the Facebook Album section. (This, as the heading implies, is the name of your album as it will appear on Facebook.) Make sure the box next to “Include selected photos” is checked.

3. Add Location info and an Album Description if you choose. You may also change the privacy settings from here. When you are done, click Create.

screen6 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

4. Lightroom is very forgiving in that it does not immediately publish your photos at this point. If you had the wrong photos selected or forgot to select any, you still have a chance to make changes at this point. Select the collection you created under the Facebook button in the Publish Services panel to preview the results. When you are sure everything is ready to go, click Publish and wait for the magic to happen.

screen7 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

5. If at a later date you want to add additional photos to the same album, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping them into the collection you just created. You’ll see that the photos you just added under a section titled New Photos or Publish, while your original collection is under the section called Publish Photos. Just click the Publish button once more to add the new photos.

screen8 How to Quickly Share Your Lightroom Collections on Facebook Guest Bloggers Lightroom Tips

 

A couple of notes on the Create Collection dialog (shown in step 3): If you want to publish your photos to your Facebook fan page rather than to your personal account, select the radio button next to Existing Non-user Album and select the desired album from the drop-down menu. The caveat is that the album you want to publish to needs to already exist on Facebook, or you can just post them to the wall. Similarly, if you want to publish photos to an album on your personal page that already exists on Facebook but doesn’t show in the Publish Services panel, you can do that here. Select the radio button next to Existing Album and select your album from the drop-down menu.

 

Dawn DeMeo got her start in photography when motivated to improve the pictures on her recipe blog, Dawn’s Recipes. She continues to justify this not-inexpensive hobby by wowing her husband with photographs of their daughter, Angelina.

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No Comments

  1. Deanna on November 11, 2011 at 11:31 am

    I really needed this – can’t wait to try it. Thanks for sharing!

  2. Marnie Brenden on November 11, 2011 at 3:18 pm

    I don’t see how you can apply this to pages on your facebook account. My photography page is linked to my personal page. Any suggestions?

  3. Dawn on November 11, 2011 at 6:33 pm

    Hi Marnie, Did you see the note in the last paragraph? It discusses how to adapt the procedure to use with a fan page instead of a personal page.

  4. Jeanette Delaplane on November 15, 2011 at 1:50 am

    Dawn. I don’t have the ‘Existing Non-User Album’ option. I’m running LR 3.5. Is this a version thing?

  5. bobbie on November 15, 2011 at 11:05 pm

    thanks had no idea that you could do this on LR..gonna give it a try and thanks for all the tips here

  6. Jeanette Delaplane on November 29, 2011 at 2:22 am

    Yay, I figured out my problem. Kinda strange, actually. I already owned LR and had fb connected (personal page) before I created a business page, so I guess the option wasn’t enabled. I de-authorized the fb plugin in LR and then re-authorized it. It then found my page and the radio button is now showing.

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