My Tech-Related Photography Posts
- My Lightroom-to-iPad Workflow
- Lightroom Goodies (lots of plugins)
- Digital Image Color Spaces
- Online Exif (Image Data) Viewer
- Jeffrey's Autofocus Test Chart
- Photoshop Calendar-Template-Building Script
- How to Prepare Photos for an iPad
- A Qualitative Analysis of NEF Compression
- Tripod Stability Tests
more...

This page lists my Lightroom-related plugins and posts.
Note: everything here is for Adobe's venerable photo-workflow desktop application started in 2006, named at various times “Lightroom”, “Lightroom CC”, and now “Lightroom Classic”.
Nothing here applies to Adobe's new desktop app, debuted in Oct 2017 and given the original application's “Lightroom CC” name.
Plugins for Lightroom:
(All-Plugin Update Log via RSS )
Export & Publish:
Export Plugins:
- Export to Google Photos
- Export to Tumblr
- Export to Twitter
- Export to Photobucket
- Order Prints Locally — Upload to LifePics for printing and pickup at a local retailer
- Export to Expono
Other Publish Plugins:
- Collection Publisher — Replicate a collection heirarchy to local disk
- Folder Publisher — Replicate images to local disk in their Lightroom folder heirarchy
Export Add-Ons:
- Metadata Wrangler — Control what metadata is/isn't included during any export
- Creative Commons — Inject Creative-Commons license data into exported images
- Run Any Command — Custom process each image during an export
- Snapshot on Export — Develop-setting data backup, sort of
- Smart-Preview Support — Avoid unintential low-quality exports
- Crop for iPad and other Devices — Device-specific cropping on export
Geoencoding Plugins:
- Geoencoding Support — Geoencoding, and working with geoencoded photos
- Proximity Search — Search for photos taken near a location
Utility Plugins:
- Data Explorer — What the Library Grid Filter should have been.
- Smart Collection Sync — Allows smart collections to sync with Lightroom Mobile (sort of)
- People Support — How old are people who appear in photos?
- Folder Status — Track your personal workflow on a folder-by-folder basis.
- PhotoSafe — Protect selected photos from accidental deletion
- Collection Mechanic — A collection of tools relating to collections
- Bag-o-Goodies — A collection of various small tools
- Timelapse Support — Fade develop settings across a large set of images.
- Workflow Delete Options — Lightroom sometimes deletes more than you ask for; this helps.
- Metadata Viewer — See all metadata within a master image
- Bulk Develop Settings — Context-based develop settings (noise reduction, etc.)
- Metadata-Viewer Preset Builder — Configure Lightroom's metadata display
- Photoshop Layers — As close to non-destructive layers as Lightroom allows
- JPEG Quality Tester — Experiment and learn about JPEG quality settings
- Folder Watch — Auto-import from select folders, auto processing, and auto export
- Megapixel Sort — Add an ability to sort by post-crop image size
- Focal-length Sort — Add an ability to sort by focal length
- Data Plot — Plot lens and exposure settings across your library
- Extended Search — Some fringe catalog searching
- Video-Asset Management — Manage videos along side photos in Lr2
- Preview-Cache Image Extraction — Extract preview images from a Lightroom catalog.
- System Info — Info about Lightroom and the system it's installed on, for debugging.
- iPhoto Collection Fixer — Fix the silliness that the iPhoto import creates with respect to “Event Photos” collections
Plugin-related Info:
Tools for Lightroom:
Etc...
- Adding Your Own Custom Photo-Metadata Fields to Lightroom
- My Lightroom-to-iPad Workflow: Now a Lot More Refined
- An Analysis of Lightroom JPEG Export Quality Settings
- Creating Photo Books with Lightroom, InDesign, and Blurb
- Stupid Tone-Curve Tricks: A Half Dozen Develop Presets for Lightroom
- Gettin’ Freaky With Lightroom Tone-Curve Presets
- Funky Joy With Adobe Lightroom (negative clarity)
- Panning a Timelapse with Lightroom and Perl
- Freaky Raw Processing: From Sunset to Moonrise
- Accessing Yahoo! Maps from Adobe Lightroom
- Accessing Lightroom's SQLite DB Directly
Old Plugin Resources for Lightroom 1 (no longer supported)
- Lightroom 1 Export Plugin for Zenfolio
- Lightroom 1 Export Plugin for SmugMug
- Lightroom 1 Export Plugin for Flickr
- Lightroom 1 Export Plugin for Picasa Web
- How to Install a Lightroom 1 Export Plugin
- “Piglets”, Lightroom 1 Plugin Extensions
- List of Known Piglets
- My “Run Any Command” Piglet
Other notable sources of Lightroom plugins include:
- Photographer's Toolbox
- alloy photo
- John Beardsworth
- Capture Monkey
- lightroom-plugins.com
- Adobe Addons
Please do not report bugs or other comments related to my plugins here. Please do those on the appropriate per-plugin page (linked from my Lightroom Goodies page).
I have used the geocoding support on my desktop for a while, it’s really wonderful. I have tried it on my laptop and cannot get it to load. In the plugin manager when I go to add it I get a dialog box error message “There is something wrong in CryptUnprotectData”. The repeated error message in the geocoding folder log is:
Error 1
Could not create info sections for plug-in.
There is something wrong in CryptUnprotectData.
I get this four times. I didn’t find anything useful on the web. Any idea how I may get your geocoding pluhin to work? Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic, version 8.4.1.
Thanks!
I’ve never heard of this before (I don’t know what “CryptUnprotectData” might be), but perhaps try downloading with a different browser, or unzipping with a different zipper. I’ve heard that some utilities corrupt during the download/unzip…. —Jeffrey
Do you know a tool to batch merge multiple catalogs into one? Now it’s just one by one, which is taking a lot of time and effort.
No, sorry. —Jeffrey
Hello everyone is mainly Jeffrey!
I am studying photography school in Paris, France.
(Sorry for my pitiful English)
I’m going to post a message because I’m looking for a LR plug-in that does not exist … and I really need it
I explain myself, I reproduced family photographs, all the photos of my childhood and that of my brothers and sisters. To do this I photographed on white background, many silver prints. For the moment, I am in the presence of more than 6000 images to treat. And the fastest and the redrawing and every time.
I think I can do it via Matlab, but I would like to stay in LR because I do not have to manage TIFF three times bigger in volume.
I am looking for a plug-in that will automatically straighten and crop my photos with a batch function …
Here you go
Sorry, I don’t know of anything that will help. —Jeffrey
Hi there,
Would LOVE to see some type of plugin that could export a CSV (or better yet, a KML) or similiar of image names and their GPS coordinates – not from the file itself, but from what Lightroom has. I’d like to then map this data. I can do this with exiftool, but then I would have to re-write the metadata in files. I’d rather not do this which would cause thousands of my photos to have to be backed up again. Thanks for great work!
The Lr/Transporter plugin should be able to do the CSV export, but FYI, my Geocoding Support plugin allows you to export a KML file of photos (with data and/or thumbnails) and their locations, so that it can open up directly in Google Earth. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey!
Huge fan over here. I use Folder Watch and Folder Publisher regularly and am so grateful to you for creating them. I’m on a Mac and planning to update soon to Catalina. I just wanted to confirm that these plugins are 64 bit and will run fine after the update.
Thank you very much!
Peace & Love,
David
I expect that my plugins will run fine, but I’ve not yet tested on Catalina. However, I’ve heard no complaints so far. —Jeffrey
Hi, is each registration for one plug-in or one LR license?
For one plugin, for all the Lr installs that Adobe allows you. —Jeffrey
Hello Jeff,
Just updated to Lr9 and it says that the picasa-face-import-jfriedl.lrplugin isn’t compatible with Version 9.
I wet to your site and also it’s removed from your list of plugins.
This will disrupt my workflow since picasa still is the best face recognition application. Better than Adobe.
Do you plan to revitalize this plugin?
Regards,
Thales
I’d retired that plugin long ago, in response to Google retiring Picasa. I haven’t tested it recently, but I just built and pushed out a new version for Lr9, so go ahead and give it a try…. —Jeffrey
Will there be an update to metaviewer for LR9? I have cash 🙂 Thanks
It was updated the same day Lr9 was released. —Jeffrey
Hi
First of all I wanted to say, “Thank you” for sharing your knowledge of photography and everything that is associated with it.
My knowledge of for instance, Metadata viewer, is very slim. I am trying to learn by reading your blog and trying to make sense of it but it is so much information to remember lol.
I have some very old pictures of my ancestors and I was wondering if there was a way to get any date stamp or GEO coordinates of any of them?
Thanks Again!
P.S. Your photographs are just gorgeous
Flickr plugin not working. I reauthenticate my login successfully just in case but still getting error during export: Unexpected reply from Flickr.
No specific message is displayed 🙁
Flickr seems to be sporadically down a lot more these days. In your case (thanks for the logs), the connection to Flickr just died with no response from them. In fairness, this could be anything between Lightroom and their server…. your router, your ISP, etc., but it’s probably just them having “issues” that will eventually go away. Not much we can do about it. /-: —Jeffrey
Bonjour,
Je suis sur Nantes en France.
J’ai téléchargé ce Plugin car je souhaite connaitre plus de détails sur mes photos.
Mais je n’ai pas trouvé le nombre de déclenchement de mon Canon EOS80D ?
Merci à vous de votre réponse,
Laurence.
That camera does not include the shutter count in the image metadata, sorry. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
i am looking for a way to compare the development data of two or more photos inside LR.
There is a plugin from 2014 on Bitbucket (lrdevsettingscompare), but it is not supported anymore and does not work correctly in LR 9.2 (Windows 10). Do you have an idea?
Thanks and many greetings, Ulrich
I just tried the copy of LrDevsettingsCompare from here and it seemed to work. It wouldn’t have support for develop settings added since then, but it’s something. Have you tried reaching out to the authors? —Jeffrey
First, thank you for all that you’ve done for the photography and Lightroom communities Jeffery!
Long story short I think I need a way for Metadata Wrangler (or another tool) to also write the Caption field data to the IPTC:Caption-Abstract field in addition to the EXIF:ImageDescription field. I think I’m observing that Google Photos only looks at the IPTC:Caption-Abstract field so trying to use Metadata Wrangler to modify the photos’ description field only works for Google Photos if Metadata Wrangler is also writing to the IPTC:Caption-Abstract. There’s a note about how Metadata Wrangler works in this regard on the change log, reproduced below.
Is there a setting or way to force Metadata Wrangler to also overwrite the IPTC:Caption-Abstract field even if there was no text in there originally?
Best regards,
R. Moore
“20190817.180 – Added “Artist” to the “Add/Overwrite” section, and updated the internals so that when overwriting an item, it overwrites all copies of that item in the metadata (e.g., when updating the “Caption”, the tag actually filled in is “EXIF:ImageDescription”, but if “IPTC:Caption-Abstract” and/or “XMP:Description” exist, they are also filled in). Also fixed the “Speed” item in this area.”
This ended up being a minefield, so I’m reticent to change semantics now. Consider instead using the Run Any Command plugin to invoke ExifTool to copy the metadata fields as you like on each exported copy. —Jeffrey
Regarding “lrdevsettingscompare”: No I didn´t try to reach the Author as I don´t know how to do it @ Bitbucket. Sorry.
Hi from Belgium,
I saw your geocoding plugin for lightroom (v4 for me)> Unfortunately Icannot geocode from GE. As Google has change the way to works with maps years ago, is it in your pkan to move from google to openstreetmaps for getting info for geocoding ?
Thanks,
You can use Google if you get your own API developer key and enter it into the Plugin Manager. The plugin also already lets you use OpenSteetMaps. —Jeffrey
Hello there from Alabama,
Is it possible to hack a Lightroom 6 (and newer) plugin to work with Lightroom 5? I have a Loupedeck+ that I’m trying to get to work on LR5 and so far I’ve just modified “Info.lua” to say “LrSkdMinimumVersion = 5.0” and Lightroom went from saying it wasn’t supported to it is enabled, but has encountered some problems. Upon exporting an error report, the only errors (3 of them total) are relating to “Could not find namespace: LrApplicationView”
The Loupedeck requires features not available in Lr5. Most of the “control Lightroom from another app” features came in Lr6 and Lr7…. —Jeffrey
Hello there from HK,
I am going to geo tag my old Nikon DSLR (D7000) photos taken in past 10 years. Over 20,000 of them. Your Geotagging plugin for LR is really a time saving tool. Wouldn’t even think about this daunting task without your tool. 100% well worth for the denotation I made in registration!
Thank you!
Hi Jeffry, I’m looking for a plugin helping me to stack photos in lightroom with more detailed options than lightroom does by itself. Lightroom could stack photos automaticaly, but it will stack them with “more or less” the same creation time, means if make a lot if photos in burst mode it may put them all in one stack. I often create dng files out of the raw files. Ok wasting some disk space but I like to stack these dng files with the associated raw file(which have exactly the same photo creation time as the raw file) and only those. When using the automatic stacking option in Lightroom it often creates stacks which contain more photos than I like to have in a stack (for example because I shot in burst mode).
Are you interested to build a plugin which could handle that?
Best regards
Stef
The “Find Next Photo Group” feature of my Bag-o-Goodies plugin can help, but it can’t actually make the stacks, as Lightroom doesn’t allow a plugin to create stacks. —Jeffrey
Hi from Sedona, USA,
Any chance you’ll develop an export plug-in creating webp files, with improved browser support I’m think of serving these up instead of jpegs for browsers that support them.
Thanks, I use your geocoding plug-in all the time
No, sorry, Adobe will have to add it to Lightroom natively. —Jeffrey
Hello from Italy,
firstly thank you for all the great plugins you produce, they are very useful!
In the past I have created smart collections with “companion” normal collections for syncing and then I manually update the normal collection when required. Only now I’ve noticed you have a plug for syncing smart collections 🙁
My question(s) are:
1) how does you plugin handle custom order in the synced companion collection:
2) is there any way to integrate my custom order if I implement your plugin or would I need to manually custom order them again, given I could custom order them (see question 1).
Keep up the good work, it is most appreciated!
Saluti
Walter
Hi Jeffrey,
I wrote to you earlier today asking about custom orders in synced collections. Anyway, I decided to try it out for myself (with success) and confirmed the following (FYI):
1) you can create a custom order in the resulting “companion” collection which doesn’t change when you sync updates from the smart collection. New photos are placed on the end:
2) I was able to maintain my custom ordered collections I’d already made by giving the smart collection and companion collection the same name:
3) the plugin doesn’t “companion” subfolders from a parent folder, I had to “manage” each subfolder individually (no big deal):
4) consequently the companion set doesn’t divide into subsets… I had to place all the companion collections into one folder (again no big deal).
Thanks again for they great work.
Walter
Hi Jeffrey, I’m writing from San Antonio, TX USA. Staying isolated and trying to organize my lightroom. I hope you’re healthy and practicing safe isolation!
I’m wondering if you have a tool and/or have at least investigated a way to copy the configurations of “Publish Services” into a separate catalog.
My catalog theses days loads very slowly (yes, I know some people think Lightroom should be able to handle any size catalog, but, alas, it just doesn’t) so I started separating out various topics into their own catalogs (ex: sports, wildlife, junk). Today I tried to use a publish service on one of these new catalogs and only just came to realize all my publishing services need to be set up. While I can swap to the old monolithic catalog and take screenshots of all the settings in each publish service, it donned on me that you of all people might have figured out a way to copy the configurations. Even if you just have some insight as to where in the catalog these might be saved, that would be really helpful.
Publish services simply can’t be copied, but you can make a copy of the catalog (a copy of its LRCAT file brought to an empty folder), open that catalog, and then remove all the photos from it. (Be sure to “remove” and not “delete from disk”!) You then have an empty catalog with all the publish services set up, though empty. —Jeffrey
I can’t get the “Smart Colection Sync” plug-in to work. I just get the message “The catalog has no smart collections to be processed by this plugin.”. What am I doing wrong?
You have to be sure to mark the smart collections that you want to work with. The default is with “<!>” in the title, but it can be changed in the plugin settings. See the docs on this page. —Jeffrey
I know the Facebook is DOA in terms of LR Plugins, but I am upgrading from LR8 to LR9 and even though I can’t use the plugin to manage images on Facebook site, I do still want to use the Publish Service collections as a reference to what I had uploaded there prior to their trashing their API.
On LR9, your Facebook Pub Service is dimmed. I know I can still open the collections and see them but it is very hard to read which instance of the Facebook Publish Service to go to as it is so dim I can’t read it. Do you have a way to activate this PS on LR 9 even though it can no longer be used to interface with Facebook? I guess what I’m looking for is an update where the code doesn’t complain about running on a newer LR version. Maybe just disable the version number check
Thanks — Dan
Fair enough, I’ve just pushed out a new version that should work. —Jeffrey
Hello hello Mr Friedl;
Hoping all’s as well as can be with you & yours.
I have enjoyed your Flickr photo sync tool greatly over the years and have watched with pleasure and & joy as you continue to improve it. Thank you.
I have begun to integrate Capture One (version 20.0.4) into my photo workflow and am really enjoying the multitude of differences between it and LR CC. Tho it has a scripting function I am extremely loath to try my hand as those tasks end poorly for me, always. I wonder if you might consider the challenge. I’d be (and likely there’d be others) happy to pay for your fine work, along the lines of your current LR plugins.
Best regards,
Michael Mazzola
Lighting Designer
Portland, OR, USA
IG: mjmazzola
Thanks for your kind words, but I won’t be expanding to anything beyond Lightroom. —Jeffrey
I am using the bulk develop setting and have been for quite a few years, all of a sudden it is removing my radial tool and altering my exposure in the latest version of lightroom. Please let me know what to do.
Thanks
Please send a plugin log after experiencing the issue, with details about exactly which settings were changed in error, including their exact values before and after. Thanks! —Jeffrey
Do you know of any way to export a text file of your Collection Set/Collection tree?
I’m just looking for something that looks like the output of “dir > tree.txt /a” but for Collections…
I’ve used a number of your plugins over the years, and I know how useful and skilled as a programmer. My scripting days/programming days died in my brain many years ago.
Thanks in advance.
I’m afraid that I can’t think of any way to do this, sorry. —Jeffrey
Hey Jeffrey – I hope you are well! I saw on a “recent” post that you had not gone to the cloud version yet. I made a partial move due to the pandemic since I was away from my desktop computer for about 9 months. Curious about your thoughts on the Cloud version these days? I am in purgatory between the two versions and trying to decide how to use the two together or go back to Classic. The cost to go full cloud is a bit crazy and I miss Classic features such as your plugins, Compare, etc…. Thoughts appreciated. Jonathan
I’ve not looked at the cloud version since. It’s just not for me, so I’ve no further opinion on it, sorry. —Jeffrey
This is some excellent work. I just registered and donated $25 for your Collection Publisher. It’s kind of mind-blowing that this functionality is not part of core Lightroom. You’re doing work Adobe can’t be arsed to do and ask for essentially nothing in return. Amazing!
It’s also such a basic functionality, really… yet, here we are.
Your plugin allowed me to reach what feels like 90% automation in my flow: take new photos, import, edit, add to a new, manual collection. Then hit “refresh and publish” so that new collection is picked up by the mirrored collection from your plugin. This publishes it to the NAS, which my Nextcloud can access. Visit Nextcloud, hit “Share” on that folder, done. Takes seconds. Through your addon, I have constant peace of mind that full sync is reached (or know when it’s not). Through Nextcloud, I can track exactly what stuff is shared with whom, set passwords, expiration dates etc. All at full JPG resolution, too. No more duplicates, SSOT all the way. This is the world I always dreamed of, facilitated through your excellent plugin. Amazing what one can do with some spit and Lua, in the Adobe-constrained playground.
The only bitter pill in all this is that your work ties me down with Adobe even more, receiving my money that in fact you earned for a good part.
Greetings from Germany
Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your work on the free tool for viewing metadata.
Thanks a lot and have a good day.