Expolumi Publishing Workflow

Before you start

You need Lightroom Classic. No account, cloud service, or other plug-in is required. This is a Library-menu plug-in, not a Publish Service; it works alongside Expolumi Alamy Publisher, Expolumi Getty Publisher, Expolumi Dreamstime Publisher, and Expolumi Shutterstock Publisher but does not need them.

Each photo can have a Channel: Stock or Exclusive art. Separately, the Album checkbox marks photos for your personal albums, whatever their channel; an album photo can also have an event or place name that gives it its own album. For each agency (Alamy, Getty, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock) a stock photo can also have a license type, Commercial or Editorial, and a status: Candidate, Submitted, Accepted, Rejected, or Withdrawn. A photo can be editorial at one agency and commercial at another.

Availability on Adobe Exchange is coming soon; the plug-in is distributed there and installed with the Creative Cloud desktop app. Try it with a catalog backup and a few photos first.

Install

1. In the Creative Cloud desktop app, signed in with your Adobe ID, open Stock & Marketplace > Plugins, search for Expolumi, and choose Get for Expolumi Publishing Workflow.
2. Restart Lightroom Classic and confirm the plug-in is enabled in File > Plug-in Manager. Install only one copy.
3. Choose Library > Plug-in Extras > Expolumi Publishing Workflow: Build or Repair Collections. The first command shows the Expolumi license terms; choose I accept to continue.

All six commands are under Library > Plug-in Extras: Open Palette..., Build or Repair Collections, Sync Publisher Status, Take Status from Exported JPEGs..., Sync OneDrive Albums..., and Map OneDrive Albums....

The palette

1. Select one or more photos in the Library grid or filmstrip.
2. Choose Library > Plug-in Extras > Expolumi Publishing Workflow: Open Palette.... The window stays open and follows your selection.
3. Pick a Channel and, if you want the photo in a personal album, check Album. For stock photos, pick a license type and status for each agency. Choosing a license type sets an empty status to Candidate; statuses already set are kept.

A change applies at once to all selected photos, and the status line confirms it. Each change is one Edit > Undo step, and the palette shows undone values within about a second. (mixed) means the selected photos differ.

Agency rows are greyed out unless Channel is Stock.

The Album section holds the checkbox, the current event or place of the selection, and a Remove button. To name an album, choose Event or Place, type a name, and click Add to album; see Albums and OneDrive.

Accepted and Rejected buttons set a status in one click. Every status change is dated.

Changing Channel away from Stock, to Exclusive art or (not set), on photos that have a license type or status at an agency asks you to confirm, then clears license type, status and date at every agency in one undo step. Photos already submitted or accepted stay at the agency; withdraw them there if needed. Exclusive art should not also be sold as stock.

The Expolumi Publishing Workflow view in the Metadata panel shows the same fields with file name, title and caption, and the Library Filter bar can use each field as a column.

Colour labels

Optionally, give each channel a colour. In File > Plug-in Manager, select Expolumi Publishing Workflow and choose a colour for Stock and Exclusive art under Channel colour labels. Both start as None, which leaves colour labels alone.

• When you set a Channel in the palette, photos with no label, or with another channel's colour, get the new colour in the same undo step.
• A photo with a label you chose yourself keeps it; the status line reports how many labels were updated and kept.
• Clearing Channel removes only the previous channel's colour.

A photo has one colour label, so the colour shows the channel only; review status stays in the agency collections and the Filter bar. Photos whose Channel was set earlier, or in the Metadata panel, are not relabelled: set Channel to (not set) and back in the palette.

Collections

Build or Repair Collections creates smart collections under Collections > Expolumi:

• 00 Inbox: captured in the last 60 days, unflagged and unrated; web copies made for OneDrive albums are left out.
• Stock > 00 Unassigned: Channel is Stock, with no status at any agency yet.
• Stock > Alamy, Getty, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock: 1 Candidate, 2 Submitted, 3 Accepted, 4 Rejected, Commercial, and Editorial.
• Exclusive art > All exclusive art.
• Albums, created when you first check Album: 00 Inbox, Manual for your own albums, and for each year with Album photos its seasons, events and places.

Collections include every file type. Set Workflow values on the original, such as the NEF; the Expolumi publishers render the JPEG from it when you publish. On a catalog built by an earlier version, running Build or Repair Collections removes the old JPEG-only rule.

Run it again at any time. It creates only what is missing and resets rules that were edited. If one of your own collections already uses one of these names, it is listed as skipped and left untouched.

Publisher status

Sync Publisher Status reads photos published with Expolumi Alamy Publisher, Expolumi Getty Publisher, Expolumi Dreamstime Publisher, Expolumi Shutterstock Publisher, or Lightroom's Adobe Stock publish service. Where the status for that agency is unset or Candidate, it becomes Submitted with today's date. Accepted, Rejected, and Withdrawn are never overwritten.

Agencies do not report their review results to Lightroom. Record acceptance or rejection yourself once the agency has reviewed the photo.

The same command also queues candidates: photos whose Alamy, Getty, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, or Adobe Stock status is Candidate are added to that agency's publish service, where they wait under New Photos to Publish. Click Publish there when you are ready; Sync itself never uploads. The palette queues at once too: setting an agency to Candidate there (or choosing a license type) adds the photos to its publish service without running Sync. Queuing can be turned off per agency in File > Plug-in Manager. Photos of any file type are queued, and photos already in that publish service are not added again. Photos Sync queued that are no longer Candidate are removed again on the next Sync if they have not been published; photos you added yourself are never removed.

Re-publish... in the palette uploads the selected photos again at every agency where they were published. After you confirm the per-agency counts, the photos move to Modified Photos to Re-Publish in each publish service; click Publish there. Use it only for photos you have not submitted at the agency yet: a submitted photo uploaded again becomes a duplicate. Lightroom's Adobe Stock publisher has no Mark to Republish command, but the palette can still mark its photos; what Adobe's publisher then does is up to Adobe, so try one photo first.

Moving from exported JPEGs to originals. If you uploaded exported JPEGs while the originals are also marked Candidate, the originals would now be uploaded a second time. Take Status from Exported JPEGs... finds Candidate originals whose JPEG, with the same base name and capture time, is already uploaded or reviewed at that agency. After you confirm the counts, each original takes the JPEG's status and date and leaves the upload queue. The JPEGs are not changed.

Albums and OneDrive

An Album photo can have one event or place. In the palette's Album section, choose Event or Place, type a name, and click Add to album. The selected photos get the keyword event-name or place-name (spaces become underscores), are marked Album, and get their album collections under Collections > Expolumi > Albums > year, next to the season albums. The keyword is not exported with published photos. Add to album replaces an earlier event or place, Remove takes it off, and event and place collections left empty are deleted. A person on an event photo (Lightroom People keywords) adds an Event - Person album.

With Expolumi OneDrive Album installed, Sync OneDrive Albums... makes its albums follow Expolumi > Albums: seasons, events and places become albums named with the year, such as 2026 Summer or 2026 Paris, and send exactly their photos; ordinary collections under Albums > Manual keep their own name and sync both ways. Map OneDrive Albums... chooses what each existing OneDrive album becomes. Nothing reaches OneDrive until you click Publish in the OneDrive Album service.

Web copies. OneDrive albums hold web-size JPEG copies, not your raw or HEIC originals. The sync renders a copy of every Album photo that is not already a JPG (2048 px on the long edge, quality 85, sRGB, location data removed) into the Publish > Albums folder of the original's year folder, in a subfolder named after its event, place or season, and adds it to the catalog. The copy is rendered again when the original changes. Your originals are never modified, and copies are never deleted. If OneDrive has not uploaded a copy yet when you click Publish, that photo fails and stays queued; publish again later.

A typical routine

1. Cull with flags and stars; recent photos wait in 00 Inbox.
2. Set Channel to Stock for sale candidates; they appear in 00 Unassigned. Check Album for photos you also want in a personal album; to give them their own album, choose Event or Place, type a name and click Add to album, then run Sync OneDrive Albums... to put web-size copies in your OneDrive albums.
3. For each agency you plan to use, choose the license type and set Candidate.
4. Run Sync Publisher Status to queue Alamy, Getty, Dreamstime, and Shutterstock candidates, click Publish in their services (or upload on the agency's website), then run Sync again or set Submitted yourself.
5. After the agency's review, click Accepted or Rejected.

Flags and ratings remain yours; the plug-in never changes them. It reads keywords to build event, place and person albums, and changes only the event-name and place-name keywords you set from the palette. Colour labels change only if you choose channel colours.

Your data

Workflow fields are custom metadata in your Lightroom catalog. They are not written to XMP sidecars or exported files, and they are included in catalog backups. There is no account, telemetry, or network request. Web copies made for OneDrive albums are ordinary files in your folders and catalog; removing the plug-in does not remove them.

If the plug-in is disabled or removed, the values remain in the catalog and stay searchable; the palette and Metadata view return when it is enabled again. Values do not synchronize between catalogs. See privacy and data handling.

Troubleshooting

• Drop-downs are greyed out: no photos are selected. Select them in the Library grid or filmstrip.
• Catalog busy: another operation is using the catalog. Nothing was changed; try again.
• A collection is skipped: rename your own collection that uses that name, then build again.
• Sync finds no uploads: check that the publish service exists in this catalog and that the photos were published, not only added to the collection.

Status dates are set by the palette and by Sync, not by edits in the Metadata panel. After updating Lightroom or the plug-in, change one photo in the palette and check it before continuing.

Support & feature requests

Something not working as described here? Open a support case. Have an idea? Request a feature, or ask a question in Discussions.

These are public on GitHub and need a GitHub account. Leave out passwords, keys, account IDs, and private file paths.