# Sharing photos with family, what is the best method



## dwatkins54

I am in the midst of scanning my farther's slide/photo collection into LR and adding time/keyword/geotags. I'm using LR Classic for this and it works fine.
I then put the files into a collection and synchronize that with LR into an album  (the cloud version, i'm not sure what to call it this week) which again works fine (thanks to some help from the folks here), including having the time/geotag and keywords present.
Now I make this album shared by invite and send the link to my sister. That works too, she can see all the photos I've put there BUT she cannot see keywords/geotags or indeed anything but the filename.
I'm guessing this is all working as intended.
However, I would like for my sister to be able to look at the keywords/geotags so the she can confirm/correct my memories... is shared album the only way to go or is there some other technique that I could use (adobe portfolio, i don't know what that is but it sounds like it might be the right thing). Any thoughts help would be appreciated.

Dave


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## Jim Wilde

Viewing keywords and other metadata is certainly possible, but in order for your viewers to be able to see it, you have to enable that in the Settings tab of the "Share & Invite" dialog. It sounds as though you haven't done that.


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## dwatkins54

Thanks Jim... you are right I hadn't found those switches. I've turned them on now and crossed my fingers 

Dave


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## dwatkins54

So everything was working well.... until my sister is now locked out because her "trial AdobeID" has expired.  I contacted Adobe Help and was told that she would need to subscribe to (presumably creative cloud, but the helper wasn't specific) for $9.99 OR I could start a team subscription.  Neither option is attractive as I'm already paying for my CC subsctiption.
In the book it discusses how album sharing is good for letting clients, family and friends see specific albums... but do they each need a paid subscription... this seems rather like paying twice (once to show, once to view) to me... am I missing something ?


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## Jim Wilde

What exactly is your sister using? Anyone can view shared albums (with the correct URL of course) without any Adobe ID at all. But if the viewer wants to do likes and comments, that user will need an Adobe ID, but without needing a subscription.

It sounds as though your sister has taken out a trial subscription, which would only be needed if she wanted to run any of the Lightroom apps....none of which are necessary in order to simply view and comment on shared albums.


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## dwatkins54

Jim Wilde said:


> What exactly is your sister using? Anyone can view shared albums (with the correct URL of course) without any Adobe ID at all. But if the viewer wants to do likes and comments, that user will need an Adobe ID, but without needing a subscription.
> 
> It sounds as though your sister has taken out a trial subscription, which would only be needed if she wanted to run any of the Lightroom apps....none of which are necessary in order to simply view and comment on shared albums.


 
I do want her to be able to make likes/comments but that's not vital.  How does she get an adobe ID that is NOT a trial?


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## Victoria Bampton

dwatkins54 said:


> I do want her to be able to make likes/comments but that's not vital.  How does she get an adobe ID that is NOT a trial?


The expired trial Adobe ID should be fine. Make sure she's viewing the web gallery, not trying to open a desktop app. It sounds like she downloaded one of the desktop/mobile apps, which she can uninstall.


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## PhilBurton

I just created a slideshow, which I shared with family members as a PDF that could be downloaded using hightail.com, which is a web upload/download service.  (Free for files up to 100 MB.)  My son wants individual photos, and I would like him to be able to view keywords also.  His photography is iPhone-based, but he and his wife use Windows.  Any suggestions for how they can view photos on their PC, including keywords?

Phil


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## JohnSimpson

I have run into the same issue. When I make a collection public and provide my friends and family the URL pasted into an email, there is no problem. The share by invite is when I have seen the issues.


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## Victoria Bampton

Can you tell us a bit more about what you've seen John? It sounds like a bug


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## JohnSimpson

Hi Victoria.  I run Lightroom Classic on a Mac.  When I want to share a collection, I usually select a collection and right click "View on Web".  Once there, I select "Share" button which opens a the "Share & Invite" dialog box.  I chose the Link Access option for "Anyone can view" and normally would just copy the link to clipboard option and paste it into my email and send it to the invitees I wish to have it.  I never have an issue that way.  

I tried on a couple occasions to chose the Link Access option "Invite only" and opted to send the email to the invitees within Lightroom by entering their email address in the dialog box.  The message goes out without an issue and initially the recipient is able to access the collection on the web.  At some point later when trying to access the link, the recipient gets a message that the link has expired or something to the effect that it is no longer accessible to them.  It has been a few months since this happened, and I can't remember the exact language in the message.  As noted earlier, I don't use that method anymore and just copy the link and cut and paste into my own email program and never have a problem.

I will try to recreate the issue and will let you know if I get similar results.


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## Victoria Bampton

Thanks John, if you do, it would be worth reporting it. Invite only would require them to be signed in to view the gallery, so perhaps they'd simple become logged out and needed to log in again to view.


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## Jim Wilde

Victoria Bampton said:


> Thanks John, if you do, it would be worth reporting it. Invite only would require them to be signed in to view the gallery, so perhaps they'd simple become logged out and needed to log in again to view.


Yep, that's more than likely. 

I've just run into the same issue with a rarely used test account that I needed to use....I think the problem is that when re-logging into a browser window using the Adobe ID the default url is "lightroom.adobe.com/libraries", which of course attempts to load the user's Lightroom Web "home page", which it can't do because the "trial period" associated with that Adobe ID was never used and has lapsed. Hence the warning message. But that can be ignored, simply paste the url of the shared album into the bowser window and away you go.


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