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With the new LR Classic subscription model only, the ability to maintain our Backlight website galleries in the future will become dependent upon Adobe's subscription model. If we do not opt for Adobe's subscription model, our only alternative is to use our last stand alone LR version in the future to publish our Backlight galleries. This could pose future issues, such as the aging stand alone LR not supporting our most current camera RAW files. It would be very nice if there was an alternative method of publishing our galleries independent of Adobe.
The alternative method could be basic and involve designating selected folders (equivalent publish albums) to be published as Backlight galleries. Any changes to the content of these folders would be identified and the corresponding Backlight gallery could be updated. The software that accomplishes this could be a stand alone app or like Backlight cloud based. The content of these folders would be up to the user to manage.
Not only would this cut the tie to Adobe, but would open up Backlight website creation to many photographers who do not use Adobe Lightroom and instead use one of the available alternatives. There are many photographers in this camp.
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Hi Ken, as developers, we're also not at all keen on having our product tied to the features of Lightroom. Our move away from the Web Module in Backlight was largely for this reason.
We're working towards making the next major version of Backlight independent of Lightroom, so that albums and photos can be managed through other means. Lightroom's Publisher will still function as it does now, but we'll offer alternative ways of getting images onto your website and managing albums. At first that will most likely be independent of any third-party clients, as there are no alternatives to Lightroom with a large user base that make a good target for our development.
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thanks Ben for the reply. I am very happy to hear that you are working to break the tie to Lightroom. I also like the idea of being independent of any third-party clients. Completely self sufficient is the way to go. I love Backlight being cloud based. When I travel, I can still easily modify my website.
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While working form within Lightroom suits my workflow, I can see the advantage of an independent publisher.
Feature request: cloud (Dropbox/iCloud/etc) sync or storage for managed albums, so albums can be published from multiple computers when needed (main computer at base, laptop when travelling or on site), but all albums can be managed from any computer. Does that make sense?
Les Bessant
Les Bessant Photography - Backlight site
Losing it - Blog
Twitter: @lesb
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I get what you're asking for Les, but I'm not sure off-site image hosting is in scope.
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I'm not thinking so much of the images as the definition/settings of the albums - maybe synching thumbnails from albums not on the current computer (no more than that), so that an album set up from another computer can be modified, or have images added.
Could even avoid synching the thumbnails, and just have some kind of placeholder indicating the filename, title and so on.
Vague notion, far from essential, just a "would be nice" feature.
Les Bessant
Les Bessant Photography - Backlight site
Losing it - Blog
Twitter: @lesb
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I keep my Lightroom folder with the catalog and plugins, etc, on Dropbox so I can access the same catalog from different computers. Doesn't allow me to share the source images but I can see the image previews from all.
Charlie
www.stalkinglight.com
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I did a bit more digging and found the Lightroom Voyager plugin, which does what I'm after.
What it does is export the albums and publisher settings as a catalog (optionally including the source image files). This can then be imported into another instance of Lightroom. If there's no matching Publish Service, it creates it as a new one, complete with all albums. If there is a matching Publishing Service, it adds any missing albums and updates existing ones.
If the images already exist in the destination catalog, you need to tick the box to import metadata and publisher settings, otherwise it'll just stare at you and not want to import anything.
It's free to try (limited to exporting 50 images at a time), and costs US$20 to register. Works for me on macOS with LR Classic CC.
Les Bessant
Les Bessant Photography - Backlight site
Losing it - Blog
Twitter: @lesb
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An ideal non-LR client would treat the Backlight backend as the master copy of the album structure. The album structure would sync back to any clients pointed to the website, including pulling thumbnails.
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I've not looked much at Voyager, but my setup with Dropbox lets me publish to Backlight from LR on either my desktop or laptop (only one at a time) using the same catalog, galleries, etc. The thing I like about it is I don't have to do anything other than give Dropbox time to sync from one device to the other. I use it mostly so I can update my galleries on the road where I only have my current images on my portable storage and then move the images to the appropriate folders on my main storage via Lightroom.
Charlie
www.stalkinglight.com
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While I still like the workflow LR enables me to, I am not inclined to accept any subscription model. In the place where I live, I don't have the bandwidth to up- and download high resolution DNGs to whatever kind of cloud anyway. With less than 1 MBit/s cloud is not the way to go. Also as I strictly believe that in reality there is no such thing as a cloud, but only other people's/companies' computers, I will not give my assets out of my own hands but keep physical copies and backups where I can control them.
What I would like to have is a LR-independent client, that can
1. connect to my server side Backlight backend and sync back all it finds there to a local directory structure and
2. notice when in the local structure a new album is created and sync this addition up to the server.
Both together would also allow for a convenient backup of published galleries.
I care less if there will be a shiny user interface or if I will have to edit template text files with the properties of new albums and album sets.
I am glad, that You have announced to come up with something useful to support those of us who will have to break the bonds to LR at some point in time.
Everything You have published with in the past has turned out to be a pleasure to use and I am confident that this will be true in the future.
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In the place where I live, I don't have the bandwidth to up- and download high resolution DNGs to whatever kind of cloud anyway. With less than 1 MBit/s cloud is not the way to go.
Lightroom CC Classic is not cloud-based, so neither will your images be. The Classic version is on your computer, just like the LR CC 2015.xx version.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Hi Rod,
yes, I got that. But subscription to Classic includes cloudspace if I want it or not. So Adobe want me to pay for something, I don't want and can't make use of. That annoys me. Cost of subscription in two years is higher than what I payed for my license plus the updates I bought from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 6. During the last few years. All times two for two licenses. Makes a steep increase in pricing.
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