LRViewer, LRVmaker, and PhotoSelectLink™                  

Before using LRVmaker, please read the instructions below.

About LRViewer

LRViewer makes no changes to the Lightroom catalog, which means that it can't create any previews that aren't already present.

Both the catalog (ending in "lrcat" or "lrdb") and the associated preview file (ending in "lrdata") must be present. You open just the catalog; LRViewer then opens the preview file automatically. No images have to be exported from Lightroom, since LRViewer accesses the catalog and previews directly.

You can distribute LRViewer freely. In particular, you can give it to clients or others along with a catalog and preview file you've exported from Lightroom so that they can view images without having a copy of Lightroom itself. You can use LRVmaker (see below) to customize what your clients can see and do. Even better, you can use PhotoSelectLink™ so that photo selections and notes are automatically sent to the photographer who distributed the catalog.

Using LRViewer

From a large-size view, you can click the magnifying-glass cursor to zoom to 100%. Click again to return to the large-size view. Or, you can press the z key to zoom to 100% from any view, and press it again to return to the previous view

The file name and rating are displayed below an image. If PhotoSelectLink™ is enabled, symbols indicating the presence of notes and whether the image is marked (selected) are also present; otherwise, a question mark appears.

You can export JPEGs with the File-Export JPEGs command. JPEGs are at the highest resolution available as a preview, and are at the same quality as the preview. LRViewer adds EXIF metadata and includes the XMP information as stored in the Lightroom catalog. The files are named as they are in the Lightroom database, with an extension of "jpg".

LRViewer is available for the Mac (OS X) and for Windows XP and Vista.

Color Management

Exported JPEGs using Adobe RGB (1998) or the custom Lightroom profile have the profile embedded in them; sRGB JPEGs are merely tagged as being sRGB. JPEGs using other profiles are exported without a profile.

LRViewer will not convert JPEGs to sRGB when exporting, so, as sRGB is rarely used in Lightroom, you may want to run exported JPEGs through another application that can convert them to sRGB before posting them on the web. (Although most web browsers aren't color-managed anyway, so it may not matter.)

Using LRViewer With PhotoSelectLink™

Before you can use a catalog that's been configured with LRVmaker for PhotoSelectLink™, you need to get a free UserID, which you can do by clicking the Sign Up link at left. Once your UserID and Password have been emailed to you, you enter them into LRViewer by choosing Login on the File menu:

A green PSL indicator at the top of the LRViewer tells you that the catalog is enabled for PhotoSelectLink™ and that you're logged in:

You'll also notice that various indicators appear at the lower-right of each image:

The pencil symbol means that there are one or more notes associated with the image. When the image is selected, notes you've made appear in the "Your Note" edit field, where you can edit them if you wish, and notes from others appear in the text field at the lower left, above the EXIF/Metadata information:

If you're a client who received the catalog from a photographer, you only see your own notes, which you can edit, and notes from the photographer. If you're a photographer (the user who configured and distributed the catalog), you see you own notes and notes from any client you distributed the catalog to.

The leftmost check at the lower-right of an image means that it is marked by someone other than you, such as the photographer, if you're the client, or by some client, if you're the photographer. (LRViewer uses the term "marked" instead of "selected" to avoid confusion with selection of images for viewing EXIF/metadata information, export, and marking.)

The rightmost checkbox is one that you can click to mark or unmark an image.

If an image is marked by someone other than you, you also need a notation to that effect in the text field at lower-left:

You can quickly mark or unmark a group of images by first selecting them by and then choosing Mark Selected or Unmark Selected from the Edit menu.

Any notes you've typed or marks you've made or cleared are uploaded automatically when you close the window, quit LRViewer, or explicitly choose Upload or Upload/Download from the File menu. You'll see any notes or marking from others when you first open a catalog or when you choose Upload/Download from the File menu.

About LRVmaker

An important use of LRViewer is so that photographers can export subsets of their LR catalogs for client review. LRVmaker ($25 a copy) allows you to customize the appearance and behavior of LRViewer for your clients. Features of LRVmaker include:

• You can lock a catalog so that LRViewer will open it only under control of the configuration you provide. (Note that anyone with Lightroom can bypass the lock, so it's not completely secure.)
• You can prevent clients from seeing EXIF information and other metadata.
• You can control what top-level items appear in the outline (Quick Collection, Folders, etc.).
• You can control the maximum preview size to be shown.
• You can prevent clients from exporting JPEGs.
• You can arrange for a watermark to appear on images, to help guard against screen captures.
• You can put your logo and a link to your web site on the main window.
• You can enable PhotoSelectLink™, which allows clients to select images and attach short notes to them, and for that information to be passed back to you. It won't be entered into the Lightroom catalog, but will be available when you browse the catalog with LRViewer. (Clients' selections and notes are uploaded to an Amazon S3 account that you own, and LRViewer accesses them from there. There's no need to deal with email, web servers, or a web hosting account. Best of all, S3 is inexpensive and very reliable.)

The marketing model for LRViewer and LRVmaker is that the viewer will always be free, but the maker will cost $25 a copy. There will be no royalty or other payment required for copies of customized LRViewers that you distribute. A trial version of LRVmaker is included with LRViewer, but it will deface the LRViewer screen with a large "DEMO" across it. When you pay the fee, you'll be provided with a Registration Code that removes the DEMO marking. The demo version will allow you to use PhotoSelectLink™.

Using LRVmaker

With LRVmaker, you can make a configured catalog, which means that the user may be restricted from accessing certain features, and that you can customize the screen with your own logo, a link to your web site, and a watermark on all images. You can enable PhotoSelectLink™. The configuration is encrypted to make it difficult for a user to bypass the restrictions, but there are two simple ways any user can bypass them anyway:

1. By using a copy of Lightroom on the catalog (LRVmaker can't stop Lightroom from working), or
2. By using a copy of LRVmaker to reconfigure the catalog.

However, even Lightroom can't decrypt the configuration, so your S3 Secret Access Key (their name for a password), which is put there when you enable a catalog for PhotoSelectLink™, is safe.

The most important thing to know about LRVmaker is this:

In most cases you'll just put your name, contact information, and a copyright notice in this image, although you can also use an advertisement, a photo of your studio, or, if you want, a completely black image. The contents of the image don't matter, only the name. The image can be located anywhere on your disk, since LRViewer cares only about it's appearance in the catalog. Here's an example:

You should assume that your client might see your LRViewerInfo image, although you can prevent him or her from seeing it by turning off one or more top-level outline items. For example, if LRViewerInfo.jpg is not a member of any collection and you've restricted viewing to only collections, the LRViewer user will never see it. Still, it's best to make the image something that it's OK for outsiders to see. A simple copyright notice will do fine.

The version of LRVmaker you're using may allow you to choose logo images that are formats other than JPEGs. However, these are not supported on Windows, so make sure you choose only JPEGs.

If a catalog has the LRViewerInfo image, LRViewer will require a configuration, so if you don't put one there with LRVmaker, the user can't view the catalog.

To configure a catalog (after you've put the LRViewerInfo image into it), start LRVmaker, fill out the options (e.g., uncheck "Show EXIF/Metadata") and then press the Configure Catalog button and choose the catalog your want to configure. LRVmaker will then write a file into the preview folder (it looks like a file on the Mac, but it's really a folder) that contains the configuration. That configuration will control how LRViewer views the catalog.

Most of the LRVmaker options are obvious, but five of them are not:

• If you check "Set Outline Default in LRViewer", the first time the catalog is opened in LRViewer you should select an item in the outline and then press the Set Outline Default button that will appear in LRViewer. (Of course, you should do this, not your client.) That will update the configuration that is stored in the catalog so that the next time LRViewer opens the catalog it will start with that item already selected. That way you can control where your clients start. (This setting is not recorded in the configuration that LRVmaker remembers when you choose File-Save, so you need to do it each time you write a new or modified configuration into the catalog. That is, it is sticky only until LRVmaker updates the catalog.)
• If you want a logo on the screen, design an appropriate 300x80 pixel image and choose it with LRVmaker. It will be written into the previews folder. It's not itself a preview, however, and won't appear in the large image window. It will appear only in the logo position, at the upper-left of the screen.
• Watermarks appear only on the LRViewer screen, not in exported JPEGs.
• If a Lightroom catalog is in the same folder as LRViewer.app or LRViewer.exe, LRViewer will open it automatically when it starts. If there is more than one catalog there, you can't control which one will be picked, so put just one there.
• Enabling PhotoSelectLink™ is discussed in its own section, below.

Configured catalogs are completely self-contained and portable. You can configure a catalog on a Mac, and it can then be viewed, under the controls you've set with LRVmaker, on any Mac or Windows computer that it's been transferred to. Or, the other way around if you configure a catalog on Windows. If you have only a Mac and need the Windows app, or you're on Windows and need the Mac app, both are available in the LRViewer Redistribution Kit, which you can download from the Download page (link at left). See below for instructions on how to use the Kit, particularly for burning a CD or DVD.

Here's the recommended LRVmaker workflow:

1. Import an image named LRViewerInfo.jpg (or any other extension that Lightroom can work with) into your Lightroom catalog.
2. Export a catalog for your client, and make sure the LRViewerInfo.jpg image is selected so it's present in the exported catalog.
3. Start LRVmaker, choose your options, and save the configuration as a document (extension of "lrvcfg") so you can reuse it to configure several catalogs. Enable PhotoSelectLink™ if you want to get selections and notes back from your clients.
4. Press the Configure Catalog button to configure the catalog you exported in step #2.
5. Open the catalog with LRViewer, set the default outline item if you've chosen that option, and verify that it's configured the way you intended. If it isn't configured correctly, go back to LRVmaker, change the configuration as necessary, and configure the catalog again. Remember that each time you configure the catalog, you have to reset the default outline item.
6. If you want, in LRViewer, open the About box while holding down Shift to see the configuration as written by LRVmaker. (It's decrypted for viewing.)
7. Send the catalog and previews folder to your client. Also, if you like, send the LRViewer application. For Mac clients, you just need the LRViewer.app file. (It's really a folder, but it acts like a file.) For Windows clients, send everything in the folder containing LRViewer.exe except LRVmaker.exe, which you would rather your clients didn't have. (They can download it for themselves, true, but few clients will.) The easiest way to do this is to use the LRViewer Redistribution Kit (see below).

Using PhotoSelectLink™ With LRVmaker

1. Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account, which is completely free. You'll get a login, which Amazon calls a Access Key ID, and a password, which they call a Secret Access Key, sent to you via email. If you already have an AWS account, use the one you have; there's no need to get a different one for PhotoSelectLink™.
2. Once you're logged into Amazon Web Services, sign up for Amazon Simple Storage Service, better known as S3. (It uses the same Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.) This time you need to arrange for payment, typically with a credit card, but there's no upfront charge or minimum monthly payment. If you already have an S3 account, use the one you have; there's no need to get a different one for PhotoSelectLink™. All PhotoSelectLink™ activity goes into a single bucket, which is named and created automatically by LRVmaker. You have 100 buckets per S3 account, so that leaves 99 for other uses.
3. Get a free PhotoSelectLink™ UserID and password from this web site (click the Sign Up link at left). This UserID's only function is to uniquely identify every PhotoSelectLink™ user, both clients and photographers. That way if you're looking at a catalog that you've sent to several clients, you'll know who made the selections and sent the notes.

Note that data transmission and storage costs used by you for PhotoSelectLink™ are under your own S3 account, for which you pay Amazon directly. There's no ongoing fee payable to the publisher of LRViewer or LRVmaker.

You'll want to read the details on the Amazon AWS web site, but S3 is extremely cheap for an application like PhotoSelectLink™. For example, if you have 100 clients a month each selecting and adding notes to 100 images, your costs will be less than a dollar per month. (That's total, not per client.)

Once you have all your login information, you enter everything into the LRVmaker login panel:

In LRViewer terminology, you're the "photographer" for all catalogs you configure with PhotoSelectLink™ and are so identified in any notes you attach to images that appear in those catalogs. Clients who receive those catalogs can see your notes and selections, which are distinct from ratings you've set in Lightroom.

Your Amazon Access Key ID and Secret Access Key are placed into the configuration that goes into the catalog (the previews folder, really), where it's encrypted. That way clients who get that catalog end up using your S3 credentials to upload and download selections and notes, but they can't use those credentials for any other purpose.

The only other thing you need to do to enable a catalog for PhotoSelectLink™ is to check the checkbox before you configure the catalog. Then any user, including you, who opens that catalog while logged into LRViewer (using the PhotoSelectLink™ UserID, which you get from this site), will find it enabled for PhotoSelectLink™.

Every time you choose Upload/Download from the LRViewer File menu, you'll see the latest selections and notes that have been uploaded by any client. Similarly, clients see your selections and notes updated when they choose Upload/Download.

Clients can't see each other's selections and notes—only theirs and the photographer's (you, if you're the one who configured the catalog).

There's no way to get selections and notes back into Lightroom, for two reasons:

• Lightroom doesn't have any place to put notes, and it's unclear what should be done with clients' selections.
• LRViewer never modifies the Lightroom catalog. (Its modification to the previews folder is limited to adding some additional files.)

Using the PhotoSelectLink™ Browser in LRVmaker

To get the latest updates form clients, press the Refresh button, which causes the browser to go back to S3 and refresh the panel.

Using the LRViewer Redistribution Kit

Downloading and Setting Up the Kit

These are the files you'll probably see (there may be small changes over time, so don't worry if you have a few extra):

Mac OS X puts a file named .DS_Store in most folders. If you see a file by that name, you can distribute it (burn it to a CD/DVD) or not; it doesn't matter, and it won't affect Windows. (You may not even see so-called hidden files on your Mac, depending on how it's set up, which is another reason not to worry about .DS_Store.)

There's an example Lightroom catalog present, in the file "ExampleCatalog.lrcat" and the folder "ExampleCatalog Previews.lrdata". Replace them with the catalog and previews folder that you want to distribute; that is, delete them and copy your own catalog and previews there in their place. You can configure the catalog with LRVmaker before or after you copy it to the LRViewerRedist folder.

Next you'll probably want to burn your version of the LRViewerRedist folder to a CD or, more likely, to a DVD. Because both Mac OS X and Windows LRViewer apps are there, that disc will work on either system. In fact, on many Windows systems LRViewer will start as soon as the CD/DVD is mounted.

Burning the Disc

Mac OS X	You can burn the disc using facilities built into OS X. Put a blank CD or DVD in the drive. When it appears in the Finder, drag the contents of the LRViewerRedist folder to the CD icon. Don't drag the LRViewerRedist folder—drag the files and folders in it, like this: That only sets up the blank disc for the burn; it doesn't actually burn anything. To do that, select the disc icon and choose Burn "Untitled DVD.fpbf" (or whatever the disc's name is) from the Finder's File menu. (The menu item might just say Burn Disc.) Once the disc is burned, you can insert it in any Mac OS X or Windows computer that meets the LRViewer requirements (e.g., OS X 10.4 or later) and then run the LRViewer app on the disc to automatically open the Lightroom catalog on the disc (see below for more details). (It's been reported that burning with an old version of Roxio on a Mac created a disc that didn't work on Windows XP. It's best to use OS X's built-in burning system unless you're in a position to check the disc on both XP and Vista systems.)
Windows XP	It's fairly easy to burn a disc on Windows XP using built-in facilities, but those discs won't work because the Lightroom previews folders contains file names that are longer than the XP limit of 64 characters for burned discs. The long names will be silently truncated. You won't get any warning from XP; the disc simply won't work. LRviewer will run, but it won't be able to find any images. So, on XP, you'll need to use a third-party utility that's capable of handling file names longer than 64 characters. Technically, what you want is a format other that straight Joliet; something like "ISO9660/UDF/Joliet". Commercial disc-burning utilities like Nero or Roxio will probably work (I haven't tried them), or you can use CDBurnerXP, which is completely free, although clicking their donate button to send them $10 or so would be nice. However, you burn the disc, make sure it works on an XP system before you send it out.
Windows Vista	The easiest way to burn a disc on Vista is to just drag files and folders to a blank-disc icon, but such a so-called Live File System disc won't be readable on OS X 10.4 (Tiger), although 10.5 (Leopard) and XP will handle it fine. There's another, slightly more roundabout way on Vista to burn what they call a Mastered disc instead, which they say is more compatible, and it is in the sense that Tiger can at least read the disc. However, my experiments on two different Tiger computers (one PowerPC, one Intel) showed that the LRViewer.app written to the disc will not execute. (It does on Leopard.) A disc written with CDBurnerXP on Vista worked fine on all four systems (Vista, XP, OS X Leopard, OS X Tiger), so do it that way, as you would on XP. It's possible that other utilities, such as Nero and Roxio also work, but I didn't try them.

The Key Points About Burning LRViewer Discs

• Put your catalog and previews folder in the burn folder first, and make sure they're configured with LRVmaker. (OK, you don't have to configure them, but it's a good idea.)
• Make sure you burn the contents of the LRViewerRedist folder (or whatever you've named it), not the LRViewerRedist folder itself. If you're dragging only one item to the CD icon, you're doing it wrong. The applications, catalog, etc., have to be at the top level.
• If you're burning on Windows XP or Vista, don't use the built-in burning systems. Use a third-party utility that can handle long names and is compatible with OS X Tiger, such as CDBurnerXP.
• Check the disc before you send it out.

Using the Disc

For Mac OS X, tell them to open the disc in the Finder if it isn't already open and double-click on the LRViewer.app item, which is the only one they'll see with the LRViewer icon. LRViewer will open the catalog automatically.

For Windows, LRViewer might start automatically, or they might be presented with a dialog that asks them if they want to start it automatically. They should say yes. If that doesn't happen (probably because auto-run is turned off), tell them to open the CD/DVD in Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer, which is a browser) and double-click on LRViewer.exe, which is the only file they'll see with the LRViewer icon. LRViewer will open the catalog automatically.

LRViewer doesn't have to be installed; it runs fine right off the disc. If your clients want LRViewer installed anyway, they can just copy the files on the disc to a folder on their hard drive. Actually, Mac users only have to copy the LRViewer.app item, but Windows users have to copy about six files, and LRViewer won't run if they omit any of them. It's better to tell them to copy everything, even the catalog and previews.

It's probably easier for your clients to just download LRViewer from ImageIngester.com.

LRViewer Version History

LRVmaker Version History