Most people using Lightroom want to display and promote their photos to the world and Adobe Portfolio is a great solution for Lightroom users.
Perhaps you do not want to set up a whole website with WordPress. Or pay another £120 a year to host a website elsewhere. After all, you are already paying that for Lightroom!
Imagine being able to edit your photos in Lightroom, and then with a click of a few buttons you can update your Adobe Portfolio immediately. No exporting of images, no worrying about storage with your website host, just a simple, effective and fast workflow
There are a lot of steps and headings in this post, but that is to break it down, so if you need to jump to a section quickly, you can, just use the below Contents table.
Let’s get started!
What is Adobe Portfolio?
Portfolio is Adobe solution to share your creations with the world. It is not just for images, but is very tailored towards photography, particularly with the integration of adding directly from Lightroom.
While it may not be a perfect Blog platform, I use it as an add-on to this WordPress website.
I have never really found a gallery, or plugin on WordPress that shows off my images in the format and quality that I like. Portfolio ticks both those boxes and also speeds up my workflow dramatically. If you want to see my Portfolio, the just click on the link in the many bar.
The Video
For those that prefer to watch, rather than read, here is the video over on my channel. Or if you’d prefer, you can click here.
How Adobe Portfolio Works with Lightroom Classic
I use Lightroom Classic with a system that transfers images from Classic to Adobe Portfolio. I also use Lightroom Classic as my photo organiser.
It does have to go via the Adobe cloud, but as we are only using Smart Previews, this does not impact Storage and, therefore, does not impact your subscription.
After you have culled and edited your photos, you can add them to a collection and ensure that it is synced to Adobe Cloud.
For this part, check out my video here. The first part explains how to do this.
Access Portfolio
Either via your Browser at www.adobe.com, or via the Creative Cloud App, search for Portfolio, and click on Launch.

It is Web-based, so there is no App for it.
When you launch for the first time, you will have the option to create a new site. You can have up to 5. Here, I have my main Portfolio, so I will click on New Site for this tutorial.

You then need to choose a theme. There are several to pick from, so go for one that is closest to the layout you envisage your final site to look like.

Creating a new Site
I am going for Sawdust, and when it opens, it looks like the below
For this Tutorial, I am going to set up a portfolio, all about our 2024 Holiday to the USA. Perhaps I want to share with family etc.
Click on Use this Theme in the top right hand corner.

You then get to your main dashboard where you can edit the pages, menus, logos etc
The first thing I would suggest doing is making sure your Home Page is called home. Mine came in as Work, so I just want to change that by clicking on Pages, in the top left hand corner, then, by clicking on the where the cog is, and choosing Edit Collection Title. I also suggest changing choosing Edit Collect URL, so they match.

Also, take a look at what else is in the sidebar and change as necessary. I am going to hide this contact link (click on the on slider button to toggle on/off) , as for the purpose of this site, it is just to display photos for friends and family to see.
When done, click on the arrow that is next to the word Pages to return to the main Dashboard, which we will explore below.
Adobe Portfolio’s Dashboard
Af first glance, Adobe Portfolio’s dashboard seems a bit confusing, and at the moment seems a million miles away from importing photos from Lightroom. After this quick exploration, it will all make sense.
Left-hand side four areas. Essentials, Sitewide, This Collection, All Collection
Essentials – where you add Pages, Integrations, and change your theme or background settings.
Sitewide – any changes here will affect the whole site
This Collection – changes the collection you have on your screen. More on Collections later
All Collections – changes all collections that adopt the Global style if your collection has Global settings, it will adopt the layout indicated for the Site Wide settings. But, you can override the Global Setting, with a specific settings for that collection only
Collections
Adobe Portfolio is organised by Collections. Within a collection, you can add a Page or a Lightroom Album.
On a Page, you can add multiple things like single images, a gallery of images, or text, buttons, forms etc. A bit like a normal web page you may find. But, you cannot add Lightroom Albums.
So, to try and simplify, if you wanted to add an area on your website to send visitors, where you have a selection of Galleries, then this should be done by using a Collection.
Let me go through firstly setting up a Collection, with many galleries, or albums, inside it.
Creating a Collection of Lightroom Albums
Click on Page in the top left-hand corner, and you should see the following screen

Down the left-hand side shows you our Portfolio structure as it stands now. You will see the top Collection is called Work.
I am going to rename this to USA 2024. You can see this is set up as the Home as well, but don’t worry as we can change that later.
You may also need to change the Collection URL to match.

When done, make sure you are on this page, and click on Add Page.
You will get a pop-up box asking you what you would like to add.

Here, click on Lightroom Album, and it should open a window to your Lightroom albums that have been shared through Creative Cloud. If you are not 100% sure about how to get your Lightroom Classic images into Creative Cloud, watch this quick video I did previously.
Navigate to the Folder and Albums you want to add, and click on the relevant album.
These are the dummy albums I have set up for this tutorial.
If you hold shift and click, you can select multiple. I am going to select all 3.

Then click on Import Selected. After a few seconds, your screen should refresh, and you will see the albums you just imported. In this case, here we have 3.

If they import in the wrong order, simply click on Pages in the top left-hand corner, and you can drag and drop into the correct order.
if your collection has Global settings, it will adopt the layout indicated for the Site-wide settings. But, you can override the Global Setting, with a specific setting for that collection only
Wish List
It is not perfect, and here are list of a few things that would be good to see in future iterations of Adobe Portfolio.
- Ability to Update from Smart Collection
- Feature to enable Auto Updates – ie reset from Lightroom Albums
- Mass update of Collections, so if I update 4 collections, I can ask for all four to be updated
The Basics Sorted
That is the basics sorted, but I go into more detail in the Video over on YouTube, so be sure to check that out.
Simply put, this is an easy and free (for creative cloud users) way of showcasing your work.
Hope you found this useful, and if so, why not subscribe to my YouTube channel for more on all things Photograophy!
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