In my previous post: Plugins to Piglets, we explored some unique ways to extend Lightroom’s plugin architecture to automate the online delivery and post-processing of any select number of images. This week we’re going to dig deeper into the flickr system to describe an easy and effective way to leverage Lightroom and flickr to build an ultra-fast searchable metabrowsesr that can be secured on a client-by-client basis.

We have been using Jeffrey Friedl’s flickr uploader for quite some time to automate the creation and delivery of a online galleries for proofing and image management. It’s a must-have tool in your Lightroom aresnal. Aside from the basic ’select-and-upload-to-flickr” routine most of us are accustomed to, we can leverage our keywords and metadata as defined in Lightroom to enrich the flickr galleries.

I suggest you start your journey by reading up on some great keywording and metadata management strategies from Jon Canfield, Ken Milburn, and David Miller The beauty of this technique lies in the fact that all your normal keyword and metadata workflow(s) in Lightroom can remain as is.

With your newfound expertise in keywording, prepare your images for export by setting your flickr plugin to export filenames and create a new gallery:

Once completed, navigate to your newly created gallery. You can now search across any keyword just as you would in Lightroom. This is also very powerful for clients as it allows them to comment on photos as well:

The search results based on your keyword selection can be sorted by thumbnails for easier viewing:

By selecting the details on one of our images, we can see that Lightroom has exported a ton of image data:

If I wanted to lock down and secure this gallery I could set it to private and grant access on a client-by-client basis. To test drive the above search utility please visit the public gallery featured above.

Flickr is but one of numerous sites that offer the ability to deliver galleries online. The possibilities for Lightroom users is literally endless with these services.

Until next time ... happy shooting!

|Brandon Oelling