formal systems

Gallery for Lightroom is designed to showcase galleries that have been prepared in Adobe Lightroom. One way to achieve this is to create a Lightroom collection for a gallery and to export this collection directly to Gallery for Lightroom using the GalleryLR plugin.

Subsequent changes to the gallery can be made in Lightroom by modifying the collection, and the modified collection can then be re-exported to Gallery for Lightroom.

Note that you are not restricted to using collections when creating galleries. You can export images from any location in Lightroom, and you can use multiple exports from different locations to populate a single gallery. However, using a collection is by far the simplest and cleanest approach.

The following is a typical workflow for creating a collection and exporting it to a gallery in Gallery for Lightroom. In this example we will create a new gallery called Examples.

This example uses screenshots from an iPad. The steps for an iPhone or iPod Touch are the same, but the screen dialogs are different.

Step 1: Create a Lightroom Collection

  1. Assuming that the images to be included in the gallery have been uploaded to Lightroom and processed, create a collection called Examples and add the images to this collection.
  2. If necessary, add metadata to the images in the collection. See here for details of the metadata used by Gallery for Lightroom.
  3. Arrange the images in the order that they should be displayed in a slideshow in Gallery for Lightroom.

Step 2: Create a Gallery

  1. In Gallery for Lightroom, add a new gallery called Examples. This is achieved by tapping + on the Galleries view and supplying the name Examples.
    After creating this new gallery you will be left in the gallery view for this gallery. There are no thumbnails as the gallery is empty.

Step 3: Start the Web Server

  1. In this gallery view for Examples, tap + to start the web server.
  2. The web server address is given in the navigation bar. In this case it is 192.168.1.18.
  3. It is important that you do not naviagte away from this view while the collection is being exported from Lightroom.

Step 4: Export Images

  1. In Lightroom, open the collection Examples and select all the images. From the File menu click Export... and select Gallery for Lightroom from the dropdown menu Export To:
  2. Ensure that the web server address is correct; see Step 3.
  3. The Quality options can be used to select the type of display and JPEG quality for the images to be exported; see Exported Image Quality for more details.
  4. If required, change the Output Sharpening and Watermarking options.
  5. You may also change the File Settings and Image Sizing options directly, but this not recommended.
  6. Click Export.

Step 5: Monitor the Upload

  1. In Gallery for Lightroom, thumbnails should appear on the web server view as images are exported from Lightroom.
  2. Once the upload is complete, click Finish and confirm you wish to stop the web server.

Step 6: Errors

  1. If an error occurs during the export, Lightroom will show a dialog and the export will be aborted. For example, if Lightroom is unable to contact the server running on the iPad, the following dialog will be displayed.

Step 7: Logging Exports

  1. If requested to do so by technical support at Formal Systems, you can enable logging by using the checkbox in the export dialog.
  2. This option will produce a log file GFLR.log that can be sent to Formal Systems for dedugging purposes. This file is stored in the Documents folder on a Mac or in the My Documents folder on a Windows PC.