Shutterfly Upload for Lightroom Plug-in Feedback
Is something not working the way you’d expect? Do you have a suggestion for a future revision? Just want to let me know what you think? Then post a comment!
If you’re having a problem, take a look at the Known Problems page to see if it’s already been reported. If you don’t see it, please leave a problem report here. Be sure to include the revision and build stamp (found in the plug-in’s “Status” section of the Plug-in Manager) and any error messages you received. Thanks!
Hello,
I downloaded the zip file and all the file extensions seems to end in .lua
When I go to the plugin manager, it shows that it searches for files with the extension .lrplugin or .lrdevplugin
I tried changing the extenions from lua to lrplugin and that didn’t work…
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance for your help..
Gretchen
When you unzip the plug-in, make sure that the internal folder structure is preserved. Check the documentation for your unzip tool if this isn’t happening.
For Lightroom plug-ins, all of their content will be in a folder with a name that ends with “.lrplugin” or “.lrdevplugin”. It’s this folder that you show Lightroom in the Plug-in Manager’s “Add” dialog.
Thanks for the question. I’ve updated the installation instructions to make this a bit more clear.
-Don
I downloaded the plugin and used it in wondows. looks great. Hopefully it will work in Mac as well.
Don,
I am working on the similar functionality for one of my application, and have a wsdl for the webservice where I need to upload the photos. Does the stutterfly is also with the same concept of webservice(wsdl) ?
Also I was trying to read the source code for shutterfly plugin and I can’t did you encrypted the code ? Let me know if I need to open the files in a particular editor.
Thanks In Advance
Mark.
Shutterfly uses an Open API similar to the one used by Flickr. A working example of a Flickr export plug-in is included in the Lightroom SDK provided by Adobe (though it won’t provide much insight into working with WSDL).
-Don
Don
Can I get the readable source code for shutterfly plugin, please
Thanks
Mark.
I’m sorry, but I’m not releasing the source code for the plug-in.
-Don
I installed the plug in on a Mac. When in Lightroom, the plug in mgr says that the plug in is installed and working. However, when I go to upload a photo, the below message is what I get. ANy suggestions??
NSError “Line 1: Document is empty
” Domain=NSXMLParserErrorDomain Code=4 UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription = “Line 1: Document is empty\n”; }
[This was tracked down and a work-around was posted on the Known Problems page. -Don]
I haven’t seen this before, so if it isn’t a transient issue with Shutterfly serving up empty XML documents, perhaps taking a look at the plug-in’s log file might give us a clue what’s going on. If you’re able to reproduce the problem, try this:
Now, reproduce the problem. Once you’ve captured it, return to the Plug-in manager and turn off the plug-in’s logging (un-check “Enable logging” and press “Reload Plug-in” again).
Take a look in the “Shutterfly Upload Global settings” section. The “Show Log File” link should now be active. Click on it to see the file in your Finder (a text file named “ShutterflyUpload.log”). Attach it to an email and send it to
don -at- don-mckee -dot- com
(replacing “-at-” and “-dot-” with “@” and “.”, respectively). I’ll take a look and see what I can figure out.
-Don
Great plug-in! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for making it!
[You’re welcome! -Don]
DOn – I’ve been waiting for this plugin for years. Thanks for writing it. One question: in my export dialog box, the file settings module is grayed out. Uploaded images look ok, though. Do you have any thoughts?
-jl
Jonathan,
Do you mean that the entire File Settings section is disabled (i.e. you can’t even expand it??) or that the Format option inside of the File Settings section is disabled (forcing JPEG)?
If it’s the later, what you’re seeing is intentional (forcing JPEG with an sRGB color space — both requirements of Shutterfly). You should be able to change the JPEG quality, however. On the other hand, if it’s the former, I haven’t a clue. I have never seen a section completely disabled such that it wouldn’t expand.
Please post back, or send an email to me at
Don at don-mckee dot com
to clarify your situation. Thanks!
-Don
Hi Don –
The entire section is grayed out. Odd – I’ve never seen it before. It is set to JPEG, and as I mentioned it seems as though the images are being converted to and tagged with sRGB. Other than that it works fantastically, and this seems to be a minor bug, in that the images are being uploaded correctly. I’ve just ordered some prints and will let you know how they come out.
-jl
PS – to be more specific, the file format selection in the File Selection module is grayed. The quality slider is not – I can still set it from 0-100.
Hi Jonathan,
Phew! It sounds like things are working as intended. As I mentioned above, the only thing you’re allowed to change in the File Settings section is the image quality. “JPEG” and “sRGB” are forced, because those are the requirements of images sent to Shutterfly.
Now, if you’re wondering why even bother to show the grayed-out Format option, or why is the color space option hidden all together, those are artifacts of the Lightroom API and out of my control. 😉
-Don
Don,
Can you add the ability to mark the photos that are uploaded to shutterfly and the date they were uploaded using your plugin. This is a feature of the Flickr plugin that allows me to create a smart collection to see all the images uploaded to Flickr.
[Good suggestion. I’ll take a look and see what I can do. -Don]
[Metadata support was added to version 1.1 of the plug-in. -Don]
Hello Don,
This is a great idea but unfortunately, it does not login or find the Shutterfly server. I get the error message:
https://ws.shutterfly.com Connection with Server Could Not be Established.
I though your diagog said this was insecure yet it looks like it is calling a Web Service using SSL. Anyway, I can connect an log in manually (outside of your plugin) but I am unable to perform any syn with Shutterfly from your program.
Regards,
Dorien
[Over a year later, Dorien and I finally connected. This turned out to be a firewall configuration issue. After relaxing the firewall rules for Lightroom.exe, the plug-in was able to connect to the Shutterfly server. -Don]
Don,
Having problems with LR3.
Plug-in error log for plug-in at: C:\Users\owner\Downloads\shutterflyupload_1_1\shutterfly-dmckee.lrplugin
**** Error 1
An error occurred while attempting to run one of the plug-in’s scripts.
LrCatalog:withPrivateWriteAccessDo: must be called from within an LrTask
**** Error 2
The plug-in encountered an error when performing the menu item “Shutterfly Upload extras…”.
LrCatalog:withPrivateWriteAccessDo: must be called from within an LrTask
bill
[I haven’t done any testing with the Lightroom 3 beta, and Adobe hasn’t released any SDK documentation for the new code yet, so I can’t say whether it’s my code or their code that’s broken 🙁 . But, thanks for the heads-up that all is unlikely to be smooth in the transition to LR3. -Don
Update: I’ve posted a query to the LR3 beta Adobe forum. I’ll update this post if I get any new information. -Don
Update #2: While I haven’t received a definitive answer from any Adobe employee, it looks like there’s been a change with the published API that broke the metadata maintenace tools introduced in v1.1 of this plug-in. I’ve published v1.2 of the plug-in that works-around the change on LR3 beta, while continuing to work on LR 2.x versions. -Don]
Hi Don,
I can’t even get beyond the Logging In stage when I tried to export to Shutterfly. Using version 1.2 build 200912011316. I get this error messages:
400
openfly:reason>BAD_REQUEST
could not parse entry XML
I’m not a programmer so it’s all strange to me. Would appreciate any help on this. Thanks a lot and thanks for coming up with this plugin in the first place!
Hi Natashia,
Sorry that you’re having problems with the plug-in. In order to help, I’ll need to see a logging of the problem. Please visit the FAQ page, and follow the instructions posted there to capture a log. After you send it to me, I’ll let you know what I find!
-Don
[Update: Natashia ran into a bug dealing with how the characters &<>'" were handled in passwords. This was fixed in V1.3 of the plug-in. -Don]
Hi – thought you’d want to know that I installed the plug-in for LR3 beta 2 and its working great. Nicely done. Thanks.
[Thanks for letting me know! -Don]
Worked fine on LR3 production release as well. Thank you Don.
[Thanks for the update! -Don]
I’m using LR3 and have successfully added the plugin in the plugin manager without any problems. However, the plugin doesn’t show up in the Publishing Manager. Any idea what the reason could be?
Hi Tony,
The current incarnation of the plug-in is Lightroom 2 compatible — no Publishing Manager. For now, use the “File->Export…” method to ship your images to Shutterfly (just as you would in LR2). I’ll be looking at whether it makes sense to implement the new Publishing paradigm in my plugin. Given the limited management capabilities provided by Shutterfly’s API, it may make more sense to leave things the way they are. We’ll see….
-Don
I just want to say THANK YOU for creating this and sharing it with us. This has greatly reduced my workflow!
[You’re welcome! I’m glad the plug-in makes things easier for you. -Don]
Hi, first, thank you for creating this plug-in. For the most part, I love it. For some reason, though, my pictures upload in some random order rather than in the order I have them in Lightroom. In many circumstances, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when I’m uploading pictures from my kids’ sporting events, it gets confusing. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Hi Laura,
The Shutterfly Upload plug-in will upload your images in the order they are presented to it by Lightroom. I’ve never encountered a case where the order is different from that displayed in the Grid view.
What you should do, though, is verify the sort order of your album on the Shutterfly site. When viewing the image thumbnails for your album, take a look at the “Sort by:” dropdown near the bottom of the page. I’ll bet you have it set to something other than “Date taken (old to new)”.
-Don
Thank you for the quick response! How embarrassing! Yes, it was set to alphabetical order so it went 1, 10, 100 instead of 1, 2, 3.
[Glad I could help! -Don]
Works great. Thank you so much.
[You’re welcome! -Don]
My hat is off to you! I use it in LR3 (released) just fine with Shutterfly.
[Thanks! -Don]
Hi Don. When I try to install on a Mac, instead of installing, Lightroom opens automatically, as if I’m trying to import photos. Any thoughts?
Hi Dave! I’m not a Mac guy, so I’m not sure what’s going on here, but there shouldn’t be anything during the installation that causes Lightroom to launch automatically. Take another look at the install instructions on the download page to double check that you’re not missing something. In summary, it should be 1) unzip the plug-in files, 2) launch Lightroom (manually 😉 ), 3) install using the Lightroom plug-in manager. If this is what you’re doing, at which step does Lightroom launch? -Don]
Thank you so much for the plug-in! I really appreciate it. But I am frustrated that my captions aren’t exporting to Shutterfly. Is there a workaround for this? Or a way that you can update it where the captions export as well?
I am using Mac. I don’t know if this is a Windows problem too.
Thanks again!
[While I’d really like to upload Lightroom’s Title and Caption data along with your images, Shutterfly’s API doesn’t offer a way to do this. Sorry. 🙁 –Don]
Don,
I just installed the plugin to Lightroom 3 on my Mac. Version: 1.3 Build 201002031602
If I upload to a new album in Shutterfly, it worked fine. If I specified an existing album, i received an error message and the upload was not successful.
The status says: the plug-in is enabled, but has encountered some problems. Should I disable, delete the plug-in file and start from the beginning with the download file?
Thanks,
Ron
[Hi Ron! Do you have problems uploading to all existing albums, or only some? Is there anything “different” about the names of the albums having problems (e.g. special characters, leading/trailing blanks, etc.)? If these clues don’t help you figure it out, capture a log file while reproducing the problem and send it my way for a look-see. The instructions are in the FAQ. -Don]
Don:
Thanks for your hard work on this plug-in. I am happy to report that it worked fine with Lightroom 4 (i.e., the finished product, not the “beta”). I will give it a little trial period and then be happy to submit a donation.
Thanks,
Brian
[You’re welcome, and thanks for the update! -Don]
I’m actually not able to specify existing albums at all. The radio button to switch from “Add to new” to “Add to existing” is disabled. This is with 64-bit Windows LR 3.6 and LR 4.
[Sorry you’re having problems, Doug. The “Add to existing” radio button activates after your album list is successfully retrieved from Shutterfly (after logging in, of course 😉 ). If you have “a lot” of albums, the retrieval request may be silently timing out before Shutterfly responds. If you’re so inclined, you could turn on the plug-in’s logging and see if this is what’s going on (it probably is). The timeout is hard-coded at 30 seconds.
I’ve noticed that Shutterfly appears to cache the list for a minute or two, so if you log off and back on again, the list retrieval may be successful the second time (or the third?). For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen this problem until recently (I’m not sure if something changed on Shutterfly’s side, or if I just never noticed it).
I’ve got a new version of the plug-in that’s almost ready for release that will be able to work-around — if not totally eliminate — this problem. Other goodies to look forward to are Lightroom 3+ “Publish Service” support, support for Shutterfly folders (did you know your albums are stored in folders? 😉 ), and one-time-and-you’re-done sign-in (no more login, logoff, passwords, etc., etc.).
Hang tight.
-Don]
Hi,
Just installed plugin in LR4. The installation asked me to update my catalogue. I did. Next day the cat wouldn’t open in LR4 because it wasn’t “writable.” Checked properties and they were good. I removed the plugin and the cat now opens.
[Hi Steve. My plug-in saves metadata about your uploads to Shutterfly in the Lightroom catalog using the tools Lightroom provides. When a plug-in — any plug-in — is configured to save metadata, Lightroom has to make a one-time update to the catalog to accommodate it (that was the prompt you saw). Once you OK it, and Lightroom makes the update, it’s a done deal. Uninstalling the plug-in that triggered the update does not undo the catalog change. You should be able to reinstall the Shutterfly Upload plug-in without incident. This time, you won’t see the “update” prompt because the update has already been made (assuming you’re opening the same catalog).
I really can’t say what caused the initial problem, but I have experienced it on Windows (and it’s caused my heart to skip a beat 😉 ). In my case, shutting down Lightroom and restarting was all it took to get things going again.
I want to clarify something I posted above: the catalog update is done once per plug-in per metadata version. If a subsequent version of a given plug-in changes the metadata it saves, Lightroom has to update the catalog again. This makes the catalog unusable by earlier versions of the plug-in. So, while normally you can have multiple versions of a plug-in installed at the same time and be able to switch between them, once you’ve allowed the catalog update, there’s no going back! -Don]
Hi don,
Please excuse my ignorance, but ive been trying install plugin in LR4 without success. By any chance could you (or somebody here) upload a video on how to do it.
Thanks!
J
[I don’t have a video specific to Shutterfly Upload, but a quick Google search turned up this video of RC Concepcion doing this demo for the 500px plug-in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=strVBnd_m8w#t=42s
The video should start 42 seconds in, where RC is doing the plug-in installation. Don’t blink — it goes by real fast! 😉 Of course, this video is about a different plug-in, so the information it contains about using the plug-in does not apply to Shutterfly Upload.
In the installation demo, wherever you see “500px”, just replace it with “Shutterfly Upload” — the process is the same for all Lightroom plug-ins. Also, RC is using a Mac. If you’re on a Windows box, things may look a little different (especially the Mac “Finder” versus the Windows “Explorer”), but, again, the process is the same. -Don]
Hello!
I am using LR3 on Windows. Installation went smoothly, but when I click on Authenticate to add my account information, I am taken to a page with the following errors:
HTTP Status 400
The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().
Apache/Tomcat 6.0.29
Here is the URL that it is using: [URL removed for brevity. -Don]
I have tried reloading the plugin and opening the URL in Firefox and IE. Any ideas? If you can figure it out, I’ll definitely buy you a beer! Thank you.
-Kyle
[Most likely, your computer’s clock needs to be adjusted to the correct date and/or time (the datetimestamp on the URL you supplied was two days in the future). The Shutterfly API requires that your system clock be within 15 minutes of the correct time, or else Shutterfly will reject the request.
Thanks for reporting this, Kyle. I’ve added an entry to the FAQ to highlight this issue. -Don]
Tried to attach the unzipped directory to LR4 but got error messsage that “shutterfly-dmckee.lrplugin” was not a valid name. I changed ‘-‘ to ‘_’ to make it “shutterfly_dmckee.lrplugin” which was accepted without a hitch.
[I haven’t heard of anyone else having similar problems, but I’m glad you did what you needed to do to get things to work! If you have a moment, please send more details of the trouble (e.g. OS, what app issued the error message, what you were trying to do at the time, etc.) to “don -at- don-mckee -dot- com”. Thanks! -Don]
I am having trouble finding the “upload plug-in” authroization on the shutterfly website. Thanks for your help.
[Authorization is initiated from within Lightroom by pressing the “Authenticate…” button in the Export dialog or when setting up a Publish Service. This is documented in the online help, which is also available here:
http://www.don-mckee.com/lightroom/shutterflyupload/1_4/help/#exportdialog
When you press the “Authenticate…” button, a browser page will be opened to the Shutterfly service that will allow you to authorize the Shutterfly Upload plug-in to access your account. You must initiate the process from within Lightroom.
If you need to revoke authorization later, visit the Shutterfly Partner Application page. The link to this service is in the “Links” section of the online help, but here it is again:
http://www.shutterfly.com/oflyuser/viewPermissions.sfly
I hope this helps!
-Don]
Hi Don,
So excited to see someone has developed a Shutterfly plug-in for Lightroom! I can’t wait to get started using it. However I’m having a problem. I’m good up until the point I try to publish a collection for the first time (either static or smart), I get a warning box that says: “Can’t update this collection. An internal error has occurred: Attempt to access property “folder” that’s not declared in Info.lua”. When I close the box everything else works fine but my photos remain unpublished.
I am using Version 1.4 build 201206011332 in Lightroom 3.6, on Windows 7.
Thanks for your help! When I can get it up and running I’d be happy to buy you a beer. 😉
Heather
[Try restarting Lightroom and do another export to Shutterfly (using File->Export would be sufficient). The error that you saw will happen if the plug-in’s “
Include 'folder' metadata” option is enabled, but the plug-in wasn’t reloaded before attempting an image export. -Don]Mac OS 10.8.3, LR 4.4, Plugin 1.4
Using Publishing Mgr to enable plugin the following error message occurs
“Could not upgrade your catalog for plugin metadata. The plugin specific metadata in this catalog is newer than the installed version of this plugin.”
Michael
[Open Lightroom’s Plug-in Manager and verify that the “
Include 'folder' metadata” option is still enabled. This error will happen if your catalog has been updated to include the Shutterfly folder name, and-Don]
First I’d like to thank you for the time you put into this plug in, it is appreciated.
I have an issue with uploading, I am uploading 90 photos to shutterfly and after 4 hours only 60 done, which means its averaging uploading 1 photo every 4 minutes.
This seems very long, so I tested by exporting to jpg and using shutterfly’s website to upload some photos. They uploaded much faster 10 photos in under 2 minutes.
Not sure what is wrong. Any help is appreciated.
My system specs are:
OS: Windows 7 x64 (version 6.1 Build 7601 Service Pack 1)
LR used: Lightroom v4.4 (x64 version)
ISP: Version FiOS with 50mb Down /25mb Up (speedtest.net shows near those speeds to Virginia. VA chosen thinking shutterfly might be using Amazon AWS, but not sure)
Shutterfly Plugin version: 1.4 (Build 201206011332)
[As long as you aren’t running out of CPU or networking resources locally, the bottleneck is not likely to be in Lightroom or the Shutterfly Upload plug-in. Unfortunately, my upstream network “pipe” is not big enough to duplicate the problem you’re seeing. If anyone else has upload performance to share, good or bad, I’d love to hear it. Please send a note to “
Don at don-mckee dot com” and let me know! -Don]Thank you so much for creating this! I have been using it a ton. Question – is there anyway to have my picture title or captions show up in Shutterfly? All that shows up is the photo title and I don’t want to use that as the picture title/caption. Any ideas on this you could share would be great!
[I would love to be able to upload your titles and captions, but Shutterfly doesn’t give me a way to do it. Sorry. 🙁 -Don]
Hi Don, thanks for this plugin. It works as expected on LR4, but I’m upgrading to LR5 and it reports that there’s a problem loading the plugin. I’m running Windows7/64 bit and LR5. Any suggestions for a workaround?
[The plug-in works well on LR5, so I’m going to need more info to help diagnose the problem you’re having. Send any specific error messages, LR logs (see the Plug-in Manager), etc., to Don(at)Don-mckee(dot)com and I’ll see what I can do! -Don]
Hi, I cannot seem to authenticate to Shutterfly. When I use seamless login, I get the following error: HTTP Status 400 error that says the request sent from the client was syntactically incorrect. When I try manual authentication I get an error that say unexpected error from Shutterfly due to timestamp. I do have a recurring problem that my PC clock is incorrect and have not be able to fix. Don’t know if this is related. I have successfully installed Lightroom plugins for Zenfolio and for Snapfish. I have looked for any way to allow the linkage between the plugin and Shutterfly within the Shutterfly site and cannot find it.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Steph
[Steph, as you’ve deduced, your problem is likely due to an incorrect date/clock setting on your PC. The Shutterfly site requires that your PC’s clock be within 15 minutes of the correct time, or else Shutterfly will reject any request made by the plug-in. Your only fix is to set the date/time correctly before attempting to use the plug-in.
If your computer doesn’t want to “remember” what time it is, the CMOS battery on your PC’s motherboard probably needs to be replaced. This is an easy DIY project, most of the time. If you’re not comfortable opening your computer’s case yourself, maybe you can ask someone for help (know any teenagers? 😉 ).
-Don]
Hi Don,
Thanks. I thought I had tried the authentication with the time set correctly (I can reset it and then very quickly it reverts to 1 hour ahead without any warning… weird, but a problem for another day). However, once you confirmed timestamp was the likely culprit, I tried it all again, beginning with and confirming the time was correct before pressing authenticate and, yeah!, it worked. I’m in and now I can upload.
Thanks,
Steph
[I’m glad that you got it working, but be aware that it’ll stop working again once your clock gets out of whack. A quick Google search for “win7 clock keeps changing” found others complaining of similar problems. Without knowing the specifics of your setup, I can’t offer any suggestions, but there are lots of options out there. Good luck! -Don]
Seems to be working here on LR5, and I note your comment says so as well. So you might want to add that information to the main page. Thanks again for a very useful plugin.
[Done! -Don]
Hi Don,
I’m having problems authenticating my shutterfly account in LR5.(Windows)
The error below keeps popping up.
Problem connecting to http://ws.shutterfly.com
The system cannot find the file specified.
Any suggestions.
Thanks
Dan
[Dan, it’s not obvious to me what’s going wrong. Here are some things to try:
If these troubleshooting steps don’t provide a fix or additional clues, maybe a log file from the Shutterfly Upload plug-in will help. Follow the instructions found in the FAQ (http://www.don-mckee.com/lightoom/shutterfly-upload/faqs/) and send the file to me so I can take a look. Let me know what you find! -Don]
Don –
I am suddenly having a problem with using seamless authentication with Shutterfly. I can turn off seamless and manually log in via the export panel – and that works just fine. I had been previously using seamless login with no issue at all – and pretty recently at that – so not sure what happened here…I tried deleting the account from the plugin and going through the process again to set it up – but when I click on the link to open it in Lightroom on that last step of the process – I get this dialog that says unexpected error from Shutterfly… with a lot of html in the dialog. Unfortunately I could not copy the text in that dialog – or I would have pasted it here…
I am running Win 8 / LR 5.3 if that matters.
Have you heard of any problem like this recently. I suspect it is either a software change on my end or perhaps one on the Shutterfly site itself.
If a log file or something would be helpful let me know.
Thanks!
[The problem with “Seamless Sign-in” was first reported last week, following a code change on Shutterfly’s servers (I posted about it here).
I’ve been in contact with Shutterfly’s Level 2 support, but they haven’t been as responsive as I would have hoped. In the meantime, please disable seamless sign-in (more info in the referenced post). I’ll post again when I have more information.
-Don]
Just a “me too” post with regard to the seamless authentication problem with Shutterfly. I am using OS 10.9.2 / LR 4.4 I’m having the same symptoms Scott described. Just wanted to post this in case it helps.
[As far as I know, this problem affects everyone who has the seamless sign-in option enabled. For the time being, please disable the option in the Lightroom Plug-in Manager. I’ll post on the main page (http://www.don-mckee.com/) when I have an update. -Don]