A finished Lightroom edit still has a second trip to make before anyone sees it: export to a folder, upload to WordPress, rebuild the gallery by hand.

Fix one crop a week later and that whole trip starts again, which is how a portfolio drifts behind the work you’re proudest of.

There’s a shorter route. Your Lightroom collections can become your WordPress galleries, and an edited photo goes back to your site with one click instead of a fresh upload.

Getting from Lightroom to WordPress that way takes one setup in Lightroom Classic. After that, publishing a gallery is part of your normal editing session.

Why Publish From Lightroom Instead of Exporting and Uploading

Lightroom gives you two ways to send photos somewhere. A regular export is a one-time copy, a bit like clicking Save As: you choose a folder and settings, and Lightroom writes the files.

An export is a copy, not a connection. If you edit a photo later, you export it again and upload the new file yourself.

A publish service works differently. It’s a connection Lightroom remembers, so it knows which photos are already there and which still need to go.

The Imagely Lightroom plugin adds your WordPress site as one of those destinations. It’s part of Imagely, the WordPress gallery plugin for photographers, and it maps Lightroom’s folders onto your site like this:

• A collection becomes a gallery. The collection’s title becomes the gallery title on your site.
• A collection set becomes an album, so a set that holds several collections shows up as an album of galleries.

That means the collections you already keep in Lightroom decide how your galleries and albums are grouped on your site.

What You Need to Connect Lightroom to WordPress

Before you start, check that you have these four things. The full list of requirements is in Imagely’s guide to installing the Lightroom plugin.

• Lightroom Classic 9.3 or later. That’s the version Imagely’s requirements list.
• macOS Sierra 10.12 or Windows 10 (64-bit) as the minimum for the computer you edit on.
• An Imagely Pro or Ultra plan, with the latest version of Imagely installed on your site. The Lightroom integration isn’t part of the Starter or Plus plans.
• An Administrator account on your WordPress site, since you’ll use it to get the security token during setup.

The setup guide also suggests clearing any caching plugin’s cache on your site before you connect.

Step 1: Install the Imagely Lightroom Plugin

The Lightroom plugin installs on the computer where you edit, not on your website. It comes as a regular desktop installer: a .pkg file on Mac or an .exe file on Windows.

Log in to your Imagely account and download the installer for your system.

Close Lightroom before you run it, then double-click the installer and follow the prompts. The installer puts the plugin in your own user folder, so anyone else who edits on that computer runs it from their own login.

Now open Lightroom and go to File > Plug-in Manager. Imagely should be listed on the left with the status “This plug-in is enabled” and version 1.0.22.0, the version Imagely’s setup guide asks for.

If the status says the plugin is disabled, select it and click Enable, and you’re ready to connect your site.

Step 2: Connect Lightroom to Your WordPress Site

Next, you’ll set up the publish service: the saved connection Lightroom uses every time you send photos to your site.

In Lightroom, find the Publish Services panel on the left. Click the + next to it and choose Go to Publishing Manager.

In the Publishing Manager, select Imagely in the list of publish services, or click Add to create a new one. Then fill in the settings the way Imagely’s Lightroom setup guide describes:

• Description: any name you’ll recognize, such as your site’s name.
• Address: the full address of your WordPress dashboard, for example https://example.com/wp-admin.
• Upload Method: choose HTTP, then click Get Token.

The token is a security key your site hands to Lightroom. Lightroom then signs in with that token instead of your login details.

In the Obtain Access Token window, check that the address is right, enter your Administrator login and password, and leave Generate a new Access Token checked. Click Retrieve Now, and when the window says the token was retrieved, click OK and then Save.

Your site now sits under Publish Services, ready for its first gallery.

Step 3: Turn a Lightroom Collection Into a WordPress Gallery

With the connection saved, right-click your Imagely service under Publish Services. Choose Create Published Collection for a gallery, or Create Published Collection Set for an album.

Name the collection and click Create. The collection’s name becomes the gallery title on your site, so it’s worth typing the title you want visitors to read.

Select the photos you want in the gallery and drag them onto the collection. Then open the collection and click Publish in its top-right corner.

Lightroom uploads the photos and marks them as published. Back in WordPress, the collection now appears under Imagely > Galleries as a gallery with the same name.

Imagely’s guide to creating galleries from Lightroom uses the same steps for collection sets and albums.

Step 4: Republish Your Edits Without Re-Uploading

Inside each published collection, Lightroom splits photos into groups. Published Photos are already on your site, and New Photos to Publish are waiting for your next click.

When you add photos, or go back and edit ones you’ve already published, including their metadata, you send the changes with the same Publish button. You don’t export or upload anything by hand.

The Imagely Lightroom plugin page adds that you can manage galleries and albums offline in Lightroom and publish them once you’re connected.

You can keep working from RAW files, too. The plugin uploads JPGs and keeps whichever metadata you choose to include in the publish service settings.

Step 5: Add the Lightroom Gallery to a Page on Your Site

A gallery published from Lightroom is a regular Imagely gallery, so it goes on a page like any other.

Open the page or post in the WordPress editor, click the + block inserter and search for Imagely. In the window that opens, select your Lightroom gallery and click Insert.

Publish or update the page, and your Lightroom collection is on your site for visitors to see.

From there, the gallery’s look is up to you, and our tutorial on creating a WordPress image gallery covers your options.

Tips for Faster Lightroom-to-WordPress Publishing

The publish service settings include panels you may know from Lightroom’s export window. A few are worth a look before your first publish:

• Size photos for screens, not prints. Image Sizing and the Quality setting in File Settings control how large the uploaded files are. Our guide to WordPress image optimization explains the trade-offs.
• Decide which metadata goes public. The Metadata panel has Remove Person Info and Remove Location Info options, if you’d rather not publish those details.
• Give files descriptive names. Rename To in File Naming lets you replace camera filenames with names that describe the photo.
• Keep portfolio and client work in separate collections. Each collection is its own gallery, so a client set stays out of your portfolio galleries. For proofs, see how to set up an online proofing gallery.

You can reopen the publish service settings any time with Edit Settings in its right-click menu.

FAQs About Publishing From Lightroom to WordPress

Once the publish service is in place, a finished edit reaches your site as the last step of your Lightroom session instead of a separate job. Be sure to check out our post on a beginner’s Lightroom workflow for the editing side.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.