Free & open source
Vibe-coded with AI

Publish from Lightroom to
S3-compatible storage

A Lightroom Classic publish plugin that turns your catalog into the image backend for a static portfolio or gallery website — built with Hugo, Astro, Eleventy, or any static site generator. No middleman, no subscription.

Download View on GitHub

Version latest · macOS · Lightroom Classic 6+

Works with Cloudflare R2 AWS S3 Backblaze B2 MinIO Any S3-compatible storage

Why Light3?

Your Lightroom collections
powering a static website

Light3 is the missing link between Lightroom's curation tools and static site generators. Curate in Lightroom, publish to S3, let your CI pipeline do the rest.

Step 1 Curate in Lightroom Organize photos into published collections. Drag to reorder. Rate and cull as usual. →
Step 2 Publish to S3 Click Publish. Light3 uploads only changed photos and writes an order.json sidecar per collection. →
Step 3 CI reads from S3 Your build pipeline (GitHub Actions, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify…) pulls the images and order.json files from the bucket. →
Step 4 SSG builds the site Hugo, Astro, or Eleventy processes the images, generates responsive sizes, and renders gallery pages in the exact order you arranged them. →
Step 5 Deploy The finished static site is deployed to Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, GitHub Pages, or any CDN — globally fast, zero server costs.

Works great with

Hugo
Built-in image processing pipelines and fast incremental builds make it a natural fit for large photo galleries.
Astro
Component-based layouts with first-class image optimization. Great for portfolio sites that mix photos with other content.
Eleventy
Minimal and flexible. Pair with the eleventy-img plugin for responsive image generation from your S3 originals.
Next.js
Static export mode with next/image handles optimization at build time, giving you a dynamic-feeling site from flat files.
Jekyll
Simple data files and Liquid templates. Drop order.json into _data/ and iterate straight over your gallery.
Any SSG
order.json is plain JSON — readable by any build tool, script, or framework without special integrations.

Installation

Up and running
in five minutes

1

Download the plugin

Grab the latest .lrplugin.zip from the releases page.

2

Unzip and add to Lightroom

Unzip to get light3.lrplugin, then either:

Copy it to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/, or open File → Plug-in Manager → Add and point Lightroom at the folder directly.

3

Open the Publishing Manager

In the Library module, hit the + symbol next to Publish Services and open the Publishing Manager.

Opening the Publishing Manager in Lightroom's Library module
4

Configure Light3

Select Light3 in the Publishing Manager and enter your endpoint URL, bucket, region, and credentials.

Light3 publish service configuration dialog
5

Create a collection and publish

Drag photos into a published collection under Light3. Click Publish. Done — your photos are in the bucket.

Clicking Publish in Lightroom to upload photos via Light3

Features

Everything you need,
nothing you don't

Purpose-built for photographers who want to publish their work on their own terms — whether that's a portfolio site, a client gallery, or a static website built with Hugo, Astro, or Eleventy.

🗂️

Collection hierarchy

Collection sets map directly to S3 path segments. Weddings/Smith 2026/ in Lightroom becomes Weddings/Smith_2026/ in your bucket.

🔢

Flexible file naming

Templates let you keep the original filename, build something like <collection>_<sequence>, or use UUIDs for stable, collision-free keys.

📋

order.json sidecar

After every publish, Light3 writes a JSON file with the full ordered list of photo keys. Your gallery or static site generator can read it to display photos in exactly the order you set in Lightroom. Supports Capture Time and Custom Order (drag-and-drop) sort modes.

🔒

Credentials stay local

AWS Signature V4 signing happens on your Mac via a bundled helper binary. No proxy, no cloud intermediary, no credentials ever leave your machine.

♻️

Incremental publish

Lightroom tracks which photos are already up-to-date. Only new or edited photos are re-uploaded. Removing a photo from a collection deletes it from the bucket.

🌍

Any S3-compatible storage

One plugin, any endpoint. Switch from R2 to S3 to B2 by changing the endpoint URL — no code changes, no new installs.