How to set-up a drop at drop.io for use with your clients

I recently released an export plug-in for Adobe Lightroom that allows you to upload your photos to drop.io, allowing you to collaborate with your clients and share photos with your family and friends.

I chose drop.io to deliver images to my clients because of the easy to use interface and ability to configure the look and feel of the drop (file sharing location).

Here are the steps I take to set-up a new drop for client use (click to read more).

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First step – go to http://drop.io and decide on a name for your drop.

In the big text box, type the name of the drop you to create.  I normally use <my name>_<client name>, for example “rusticolus_acmebooks”.

The text box should look something like this:

Notice that it has a green background – this means that the name is valid and available for you to use.  If there is a problem, the box turns red and the reason is stated below the box.

Skip over the other options for now and click the big green “Create A Drop” button.

This next bit is important – you want to have full control of your drop.

Specify a password and valid email address.  If you don’t do this, you can’t make the drop private or configure the look and feel.

Once you have sorted out the administrator access, click on the settings link in the top right corner.

Now you have a drop, the first thing to do is sort out your client’s access.

From the settings page, click Guest password, it is in the Access control section.  This is the password you send to your client to access the drop, so make it usable but secure.

Now click on Guest Permissions.

By default Guests have full access to the files in the drop.  You should change this depending on the client and your intention with the images.  Here are a couple of examples:

• Hi-res image delivery: comment, reorder, chat and download
• Interactive proof sheet: comment, reorder and chat.

The next step is to customise the drop to match your own branding.  Go to Customize and work your way down the options.  Remember that this controls how your drop will look to your client, so don’t get too carried away!

• Design: If you have a good background for your twitter account, this may work here too.
• Logo: This is displayed on the top of the right hand sidebar.
• Sidebar: Only show the widgets that you want to use with your client – less is more!
• Description: a brief description of what photos you are displaying or about you and your company
• Navigation: I prefer to use the simplified navigation – once again, less is more.
• Default view: I leave this as Media

And thats it!  You are now ready to upload files to your drop and share with your client.

In a lot of cases, 100Mb storage isn’t enough space to deliver those hi-res images, so don’t forget that you can buy a premium code to upgrade your drop to 1Gb of storage for only $10 – a tiny price to provide the extra value to your clients.

If you use Adobe Lightroom then you can upload your photos directly to the drop using the Photo-drop Lr export plug-in.  Not only does it upload photos to existing drops, it can create new drops and set the access controls with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Visit www.photo-drop.com and download the free trial now.

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Plug-in discount – only one week left

Just a reminder that the discount code for the Photo-drop Lr plug-in for Adobe Lightroom is only valid for another week – it expires on 15th July 2009!

It gives rusticolus images visitors a 15% discount by using discount code rid015 when you check-out.  The discount has to be applied during check-out and can not be given as a refund.

If you are a member of ukBPN, then look at this thread for a different discount offer.

Just visit http://www.photo-drop.com to purchase.

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Zip photos from Lightroom

I recently needed to compress a bunch of photos from my Adobe Lightroom catalog into a zip file and couldn’t find an easy way to do it. So I threw together a quick export plug-in to do the work for me.

Rather than leave the plug-in sitting on my hard-drive, I thought I would take a few minutes to tidy it up and share it with the rest of you Adobe Lightroom users.

Of course, those few minutes turned into a couple of hours, mainly due to the fact that Windows does not have a real built in zip utility, so I had to add some extra bits (Apple got it right with built in zip support on the Mac).

It is pretty simple to use.

1. Download, unzip and install the plug-in with Plug-in Manager.
2. To zip up some photos, select them in the Library module and Export. Select ‘Export to Zip’ (by clicking on the banner).
3. Specify the name and folder location where you want to save the zip file, specify your normal file export parameters and press Export.

You can download the plug-in from here and yes, its free.

Hopefully it will be of use to someone!

UPDATE July 3rd: Thanks to help from Matt (The Photo Geek), I have included Info-zip with the plugin for Windows users, so now no need to install 7-Zip!

UPDATE July 7th: Yes, it works on Mac and Windows, hit me in the comments if you get problems!

UPDATE August 21st: Fixed the bug where the temp directory information was included in the zip file and the file dialog defaulting to a '.txt' file on Macs.

You can find more of my Adobe Lightroom plug-ins here.

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Sharing multiple images through twitter

I have recently made some updates to the Photo-drop Lr plug-in for Adobe Lightroom.  One of which was to make it simple to post and share images with people by sending a message to twitter.

I also wanted to make this functionality available for free – it is included unrestricted in the ‘trial’ version, so you can post photos up to 800 pixels in size to twitter, straight from Lightroom.

Even better, you can upload a collection of images and send a tweet with short URL pointing at the photos, all in one go using the Photo-drop Lr plug-in.

Which is great for publically sharing your photos from the latest tweetup, photo walk or strobist meet.

Because Photo-drop Lr uploads to drop.io people can comment on your photos and chat with other viewers in real-time.

So, now as well as using the plug-in to create private sharing locations for your photos directly from Adobe Lightroom, you can also share them publically with your followers using the new tweeting feature.

Want to help out with the upkeep of the plug-in?  Just buy the full version and get access to all it’s benefits.  You even get a 15% discount if you buy before 15th July 2009 by using discount code rid015 when you checkout.

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Lightroom plug-in development tip

It dawned on me today that the first thing I do when I start a development project for a Lightroom plug-in is to add my standard test dialog.

Its simply a bare modal dialog with one edit field and a push button, but it allows me to quickly test ideas and new code without having to create a complete, finished interface.

I just call the function I want to test when the button is pressed.  I use the edit field for various things, like passing function parameters etc.

For example, I am currently testing a library that connects to a web service.  Rather than write all the user interface options and widgets for the export screen, I just call the code from the dialog, using the push button.

I know, its not rocket science, but it works for me!

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