New Lightroom “Collaborative Proofing” Feature

It’s not a fully complete feature yet — it’s a “Technology Preview” so Adobe is still working on it, and still taking your feedback (in fact, they ask for it right on the proofing page, which I think is awesome).

If you need to send images to a client (or friend) as proofs you’ll find this really helpful (well, more so when it’s fully functional). Here’s a quick overview of the new “Collaborative Proofing” technology preview where it’s at right now in the development phase.

STEP ONE: You have to have synched a collection of images to Lightroom Mobile (Lightroom CC) to enable proofing, so that’s really your first step. Then in your Web Browser go to lightroom.adobe.com and log-in with your Adobe ID. Then look up in the top left corner of the screen and you’ll see a blue pop-up dialog asking if you want to enable Collaborative Proofing. Click on the LR icon. From the pop-up menu that appears, choose “Technology Previews.”

STEP TWO: This brings up the Technology Previews window (shown above). Turn on the checkbox for Collaborative Proofing and then click the Apply changes button (as seen here).

STEP THREE: Now, click on the collection you want to have available for collaborative proofing. Above your thumbnail grid you’ll see four tabs and the last one is the Proofing tab, so click on that tab to see the Collaborative Proofing options. Here you can turn on Collaborative Proofing, and then it gives you a link where you can share this collection with anyone you’d like to give feedback on these images. What I like is that they give you the option of limiting the number of total picks the people you sent this link to can make. That way, you can limit their picks to 5 or 10 or whatever number works for you. There’s nothing worse than sending a proof page with 120 shots, and your clients choose a 112 (Well, unless of course, you’re charging by the image).

STEP FOUR: If you click the clipboard icon next to the link, it copies the link to your clipboard. If you share that link with someone, to mark a photo as a selection, or to leave a comment on an image they will have to sign in with an Adobe logo (and it tells them that right on screen). Once logged in, they can see the images at a large size; click the round checkmark to mark an image as a “pick” and leave comments that come right back to you in the proofing window. There are navigation arrows at the bottom of the screen to lead the viewer through the images to proof.

STEP FIVE: Their selects and comments will appear in the proofing panel. Well, I believe that’s the plan anyway, but after clicking the refresh/sync button in the top right corner numerous times, none of the nine images selected by my test clients ever showed up.

UPDATE Friday 4:04 pm ET: It’s working now (see below). 🙂

If you click on the blue “Create Album” button, it takes the 9 images my test clients selected (two different people) and puts them in their own separate album, so you can see which ones they chose.

Give it a try yourself and see what you think. Here’s to a great Easter weekend, everybody! 🙂

-Scott

P.S. Want to learn more about Lightroom in three days than you have in three years? Come join us at the Photoshop World Conference in Orlando, May 31st – June 2, 2019. It’s a Lightroom love-fest. Here’s the link with details.