When Uploading from Lightroom, is there an advantage to Jeffrey Friedl's plugin vs. the built-in exporter?

Question

Starting with Lightroom 3, it's possible to upload directly to SmugMug using the Lightroom publishing feature that's part of the software. I see that Jeffrey Friedl (author of many Lightroom plugins) also has a SmugMug exporter available. What would be the advantage to using (and paying for) Mr. Friedl's plugin?

Answer 1

I have used Jeffrey's plug-in, and I find it more functional and capable in general. It really makes sense to use it if you commit to using publishing capabilities instead of exporting. There's a good overview of the differences and why publishing is a better model here:

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/smugmug/publish

I've written about doing this in some detail as well, and that's avialable here:

http://www.chuqui.com/2011/11/publishing-to-smugmug-a-geeks-view-part-1/

so in summary, yes, the Friedl plug-in is worth using, but even more than that, it makes publishing to smugmug instead of exporting to smugmug viable and that's a real winner, once you commit to setting it up and getting it running.

Answer 2

Upfront Disclaimer: I work for SmugMug and I'm the developer of our official LR plugin.

Firstly, I want to say that Jeffrey Friedl's plugin is awesome. His dedication to continued development over the years has been nothing short of amazing.

However, over time, his plugin has grown to be overwhelming especially for new users. So SmugMug's approach to our own plugin development has been to try to keep things as simple as possible while providing a fully featured implementation of LR's publish interface.

Here's a list of advantages for our plugin, as I see them...

1. Uses OAuth instead of basic auth - Better security as the plugin isn't required to keep track of your password. This allows you to change your password as frequently as you like without affecting LR's access to your account and you can remotely revoke access at any point from your Control Panel on SmugMug.
2. Create and edit categories, subcategories and galleries directly in the tree. All gallery settings can be either set with a quick setting or individually as required.
3. Full drag and drop support for tree hierarchy - Quickly and easily move categories, subcategories and albums to a different location in your tree.
4. Syncing of your complete category, subcategory and gallery structure with a simple click of a button.
5. Image syncing - Associate images on SmugMug that also exist in your LR catalog on an account or individual album level. Including a way to select the correct image if multiple matches are found within your catalog.

Here's a list of advantages for Friedl's plugin (note, others probably know this better than me)...

1. Plays nicely with other Friedl plugins like GPS Injector
2. Export or Publish - Allows the user to choose to use either LR's Export or Publish interfaces
3. Metadata Management - Several advanced features for how image metadata is handled on export, including adding additional keywords to every exported/published image
4. Integration with Twitter

Answer 3

One thing to be aware of: If you publish "proofs" and then after an order comes in you want to edit the image in Photoshop, you can't republish the image to replace the previously published image (which was initially a .raw or other raw file format in your LR catalog) with your newly created .psd version of the same photo so that A) the print order is printed with the edits you made in the .psd and B) the image shown in your smugmug gallery is replaced with the edited image.

This is because you can't stack images in a collection, and publish uses collections. You can't keep your LR catalog sync'd with your smugmug galleries if you publish proofs then later edit those same images in photoshop. This problem occurs with the jfriedl plugin - I'm not sure if it also occurs with the Smugmug plugin.