It seems like most photos at some point show up on social media sites such as Facebook.
I'd like to show you an amazing feature that will allow you to share directly from within Lightroom CC.
Then we'll take a look at how to do the same on your phone or your tablet.
In the Library module of Lightroom CC just below the Folders and Collections you will find an area called Publish Services and that's where you can set up posting to various social media sites.
In this case we're going to look at Facebook but the settings for the other sites are in general the same.
On the right side I find a choice called Set Up... and if I click that it brings up this screen.
At the very top you have the choice of Publish Service and if you click there you could name it and as you'll see later, it will just have the name on the left side.
Below that we have our Facebook account and that's the most important part.
There's a button called "Authorize on Facebook".
If you press it, it's going to send you over to your web browser after just giving you a warning, so you're not surprised.
When you get to your web browser, as long as you're signed in to Facebook all you need to do is click a "Continue" button and you're simply telling Facebook that it's ok that Lightroom CC can have access and can post things to your Facebook account.
It's never going to post anything without your permission though, so you don't have to worry about weird things showing up.
It's just going to be the images you choose.
After you've clicked "Continue" if you return to Lightroom CC you'll find that instead of having the "Authorize on Facebook" button available it shows that it's already been authorized.
Now the other settings that are in this screen are very similar to what you have when you set up an export preset.
Let's just look at a few of the settings that are specific to social media.
One of those is the Album.
On Facebook you can organize your photographs in the Albums and if you've set up albums there you could choose the album you'd like to upload too.
I'm going to have mine set up for Mobile Uploads, so this shows up in the same place as photos I upload from my mobile devices like my phone or tablet.
You can also click on any of these other sections to customize them.
The main ones you might want to think about would be Image Sizing because you probably don't want to post your full-size pictures to Facebook.
You probably want to get them scaled down so they're a reasonable size and that's where you can do it.
But otherwise these other settings are very similar to what you get when you're exporting.
The ones that are specific to social media are mainly near the top.
When you're done on the right side you click "Save" and once you do you will find that in that area called Publish Services now Facebook is set up and it will give me the name of the album that I chose on Facebook.
If you remember mine was called Mobile Uploads.
Now let's see how we can post our pictures to Facebook directly from Lightroom CC.
It's all set up.
All we have to do is show them which photos we'd like to be posted to Facebook.
If I click on any photograph from any section of Lightroom CC I can drag it on top of the name of that album and when I do the number on the right side that is currently at 0 will increase to indicate how many images I've put there.
If I click on the name of the album, then I'm going to see all the photos that I've put inside them.
Once I've done that you'll find just above it, it says New Photos to Publish which means this photo is not yet on Facebook because Lightroom CC never wants to do it automatically.
It wants to make sure you're doing it on purpose.
So, you look at this, click on the image and in the upper right you'll find a "Publish" button.
The moment you click that "Publish" button it will connect to Facebook and post this image.
Then above the photo it'll indicate that this is a "Published Photo".
If you were to go to Facebook you'd see the image.
And on Facebook if you click the "Like" button or start typing in comments those comments will also be tracked by Lightroom CC.
And if you return to Lightroom CC and you click on the name of that album, click on the photo then on the right side that's where you're going to find your comments.
And what's nice is in this Comments area it will tell you how many likes you have, you can read the comments that were posted on Facebook and there's a field above where you can type in your own comment.
So, if I were to respond to a comment, I can click there and type in some text then if I went back to Facebook I would see the comment as if I typed it right here on Facebook even though I entered it in Lightroom CC.
So, a few other details, and that is if I return to Lightroom CC and I choose another photograph and drag it on top of that album, the number to the right will go up again, drag another photo over and I'll then see that this is divided up into two parts. it will show me on the bottom the images that have already been published and could be viewed on Facebook.
And above that it will show me new photos that have yet to be published.
If I want to post those images I just click on them and hit the "Publish" button.
The other thing you might need to think about is what if after I post an image to Facebook I come in here to Lightroom CC and I change the image, maybe I make it black and white or I crop it differently.
Well, most of the time when I do something like that I don't want to repost the image on Facebook because I've already posted it I've already got the comments and I don't need to keep them too up-to-date.
So, if you ever drag an image over and later on make a change after it's been published, then you can right click on it.
If you right-click on it you'll see a menu of choices and near the bottom will be a choice called "Mark as Up-To-Date.
If you choose that it will not attempt to upload it again to Facebook.
But if you don't mark it as up-to-date, it's going to mark it as an unpublished photo and you could hit the "Publish" button to post it yet again.
So now you know how to get Lightroom CC to help you post to your favorite social media sites.
