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.

-!-

Comments

[Mad]

Hi Mark,

I was just looking for a plug-in like this, thanks for sharing! so I downloaded it, but LR keeps looking for .lrdesign files whereas you only have .lua files. Sorry I'm a complete LR beginner, so appreciate your help!

Madbar

[Mark Wilson]

Hi Madbar

When you unzip the zip file, it should create a folder called "ExportToZip.lrplugin", which contains the lua files.

You need to point Plug-in Manager at that directory rather than the individual lua files.

Does that fix your issue?

[Mad]

how dumb of me...
tks v much!

[MarcoPhoto]

Hi, first of all compliments for this usefull plugin.
I just have a small problem: in my case the images are zipped into subfolders.
Why does it make that?

Thank you very much
marco

[Mark Wilson]

Hi Marco

Can you let me know more details of what operating system and version of Lightroom you are using.

What are the names of the sub-folders?

[Phil]

Thanks a lot for the tool.
I'm having subfolders in the zip too.
I'm using Leopard 10.5.8 with LR 2.4

Here is the folders structure from within the .zip file:

var/folders/+6/+6LUxULVE3mcqyXCSDhE5U+++TI/-Tmp-/7AA1C52B-3DE9-4440-9BA5-B94E3080DAC0/

[Mark Wilson]

Thanks for the extra info Phil.

I have now fixed the problem (version 0.2.0), download it using the original link above.

[bw]

HI,

I have installed the plugin today. It works fine on mac. But it has a small problem: if there is whitespace inthe filename, it dows not work properly.

Furtheron, one enters the zip file as new file. But finder in this case claims that it wants the suffix ".txt".

This is a bit confusing but no showstopper.

I was starting to write such a plugin, then decided to google for it. Voila, you already did the job.

Thanks a lot.

[bw]

Hi,

thanks for this plugin. I just wanted to write this but then I found yours.

There are two minor problems:

1. When creating the file, Finder wants to assing the extension .txt

2. When the path to the zip-file contains spaces, the path is truncated.

[robotti]

Hi Mark
on my mac G5 OSX 10.4 + LR 2.6 the plugin don't work. It's installed into pluin manager, but I don't see ‘Export to Zip’ from Export menu.
Thanks,
Daniele

[robotti]

sorry... your plugin works fine! I have not seen the ‘Export to Zip’ INTO the banner inside Export window

[Mark Wilson]

Hi bw, I have added these couple of things to the TODO list. I'll try and get a new release out soon.

[Jonathan]

Hi Mark,

The plug in works great on the Mac, just what i've been looking for. Only problem i find is that it ignores any name i give to the file and calls it zipexport.zip, also doesn't put it in the folder i specify. When i unzip it it creates a load of subfolders like a Russian dol. Saw that you corrected this in a new version but i don't seem to have it

Thank you

Jonathan

[Anonymous]

Hello and thanks, I am having same problem as others: There is no "Export to ZIP" menu shown when trying to export. I am on Win 7 X64, LR 3.0.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Ok sorry, I found out! It appears not in the menu, but in the dialog, I did not get that! Thanks!

[Denny Deaton]

I love the idea of this plug-in but it's not working correctly (for me at least). It exports as expected but not to the directory or zip file I specific in the path. It creates a zip file called Client.zip two directories up from where I specified it in the settings.

I am running version 2.0.

I'd really love to use this! Please let me know if you have any other questions or help testing a newer version.

Thanks!
Denny

[John]

Thanks for a great utility. I used it successfully on Windows with Lightroom 3.6, but after upgrading to a 64-bit edition of Lightroom the plugin doesn't appear any longer. Hope you have time and look into this. Thanks again.

[Mark J M Wilson]

Hi John, do your other plugins still show? I developed it on a 64 bit version and tested it on 32 bit, so it should just work.

Try installing it again in 64 bit Lightroom.

Cheers
Mark.