Building a PayPal Functional Web Gallery in Lightroom

Rikk Flohr © 2009

As a follow-up to my presentation at the Lightroom User’s Group on March 11, 2009, I am reviewing the steps taken to provide a guide for implementation of a PayPal functional web gallery using Lightroom 2.x.

Whether you are just posting pictures of the child’s soccer team and recouping a buck a print from the other parents or posting a wedding set for a professional client, you need to have a means to integrate revenue recovery into your photography. You may want to sell fine art prints and have found that a shopping cart solution is too expensive. To the rescue come Lightroom, the LightRoom Galleries and PayPal.

The first step in producing a Lightroom-generated web gallery with PayPal functionality is to make certain you have an active account at PayPal. Go to the PayPal website at www.paypal.com and create an account if you do not have one already. Once this is done you are ready for the next step.

Navigate your browser to the LightRoom Galleries at www.lightroomgalleries.com. Once there, you will want to decide whether you are going to create an HTML or a Flash-based gallery. If you are on a webhosting service with limited bandwidth or are planning to distribute your ecommerce galleries by email, you should opt for the HTML version of the LRG One Gallery with PayPal Shopping Cart: http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/template-downloads/lrg-one-with-paypal-shopping-cart/. If you have the bandwidth for the flash gallery, you can download the file http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/template-downloads/lrg-flashslidestrip-with-paypal-2/ . I would strongly urge you to consider offering the author of these galleries a small contribution by hitting the Donate button on the download pages.

Once you have downloaded the respective galleries, you will need to expand the files into the directory where Lightroom stores its web galleries.

On Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Web Galleries

On Vista:
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\AdobeLightroom\Web Galleries

On Mac:
Users/YourUserDirectory/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Web Galleries

Lightroom will now be able to see and use these templates to generate your website. Review the readme file in the compressed folder as it contains instructions on how to ensure pricing is formatted correctly for your gallery so that your description, pricing, and shipping transfer correctly to PayPal.

I highly recommend that you build either a Smart Collection or a regular Collection of the images you are going to include in your ecommerce web gallery. Web gallery generation is an intensive process and the tighter your image collection is before launching the Web module the quicker the program will respond. Once you have selected your images and have created some variety of collection in which to house them, you are ready to apply the pricing.

Pricing in the gallery is controlled by the Instructions field of the IPTC Data under Workflow. From the Library Module you can access this filed by choosing the Metadata Panel on the right hand side of the Grid Display. Pricing is entered in this format: DESCRIPTION-PRICE-SHIPPING PRICE, and then repeated.

Example: 4x6 Print-2-0,5x7 Print-8-1,8x10 Print-20-3

The above example prices three different print sizes with three different sell values in dollars and three different shipping charges in dollars. You can select multiple images and type these figures into the Instructions field or you can create a preset to apply the pricing to a large number of images at once. I have included a preset with this post that will apply the Example pricing to all currently selected images. Download this preset onto your machine and put it in your Metadata Presets Folder.

On Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\ Metadata Presets

On Vista:
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\AdobeLightroom\ Metadata Presets

On Mac:
Users/YourUserDirectory/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Metadata Presets

With your images destined for your PayPal gallery selected, choose the Preset pull-down from the top of the Metadata Panel. You will see a message asking you to confirm its application. I recommend you do not check the ‘Do not show this message again’ box as it will keep the process clear in the future. This will apply your pricing to all of your images selected.

Now you are ready to go to the Web module. When you select the Web module for the first time, you will likely get the default HTML basic gallery. Expand the Engine Panel on the right-hand side and select the LRG One Paypal or LRG FlashSlideStrip PayPal gallery. Now you must begin to customize your gallery to suite your individual style and needs. Starting in the General Site Labels section and begin to change the default text that appears there.

As you work your way down the Site Info panel, you will come across the PayPal Options Section. This section is essential to interfacing your end-result successfully with PayPal. You must check the Include PayPal Features box. Enter in the information for your PayPal account and the remaining information in that section. You can then customize the appearance of the gallery to suite your visual style. Once you have completed this process, I would highly recommend that you save your Template as a User Preset in the Template Browser Panel on the left side of the screen. You will likely use this template over and over again.

The last step in the process is to package the gallery for transport via Email or Web. The Export button at the bottom of the right-hand panel will create all the files necessary to support the gallery in a single folder at the destination on your hard drive of your choosing. The Upload button will do likewise onto a server of your choosing. Once these galleries are created, you can access them by clicking on the index.html file inside each gallery. I have example galleries posted on my website at: http://www.fleetingglimpse.com/gallery/prints.htm. Here I used the same user template to create four similar look-and-feel galleries all linked through a common page.

Once you have placed your gallery in circulation, people can buy your pictures, either individually or in a shopping cart managed by PayPal. Your buyer need not have an account with PayPal as they facilitate credit card transactions without an actual buyer’s account. You as the seller must have an account. There will be a small fee of 2-4% incurred by you so price your materials with this in mind.

You can, with a good set of Metadata Pricing Presets, and a couple of finely-tuned Web Gallery templates, build and distribute a working ecommerce solution to your photography in short order. You can go from collection to finished gallery live on the web in, literally, a few moments.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Rikk Flohr writes and teaches photography and image editing in a variety of venues. You can reach Rikk through his website at www.fleetingglimpse.com or his blog at http://fleetingglimpseimages.wordpress.com