How to Post to Instagram Directly from Lightroom

There are several different ways to post to Instagram from a desktop or laptop. Here’s an option for posting to Instagram from Lightroom directly.

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UPDATE: LR/Instagram appears to have been abandoned, and it is no longer a viable way to post directly to Instagram.

The developers’ note on their website says: “Service Note: Instagram has updated their protocol and currently plugin does not work. We are investigating the issue and the plugin will be updated when a fix is available.”

That note has been there at least a few years now with no update, so I don’t expect it will ever be revived. I’m leaving this post here as a legacy reference.

There are several different ways to post to Instagram from a desktop or laptop computer. And thanks to this plugin, it’s even possible directly from Lightroom. It’s called LR/Instagram. It’s shareware–a license is $10.

Features of the LR/Instagram Plugin for Lightroom

Build Captions Using Lightroom Metadata. You can use tokens from Lightroom’s extensive metadata to automatically build Instagram captions.

Hashtag Panel. The plugin adds a new metadata panel where you can add hashtags. These are used exclusively by the LR/Instagram plugin, so you don’t risk polluting your keywords or captions panels with hashtags that won’t work in other places.

Crop & Pad. Instagram is no longer locked into the square–you can now post rectangular images–but there are still limits on the aspect ratio. It has to be between 4:5 and 1.91.1. The most common type of aspect ratio that falls outside of that is a narrow panorama. With this feature you can have the plugin automatically pad the edges if necessary to make it conform to Instagram’s requirements.

If you do happen to be working with panoramic images, Instagram now has a neat new way to post panoramas.

Multiple Accounts. Many of us have multiple Instagram accounts. Maybe you’re managing social media marketing for a business or clients. Or maybe you just have separate ones for work and personal. I have separate ones for my main travel photo account and one with a narrow focus on Washington DC’s cherry blossoms, for example.

With this plugin you don’t need to switch between accounts, as such. You simply create a different publish service for each account. That greatly reduces the risk of accidentally posting to the wrong account.

Multiple Images. You can post multiple images at once. Each will appear as a separate post.

Edit Metadata in Lightroom. Even after a photo is posted, you can edit the metadata and republish to update on the Instagram site.

Limitations

No Filters. You don’t have access to Instagram’s built-in filters. Of course, since you’re using Lightroom, you have access to Lightroom’s infinitely more powerful editing options and filters before you upload.

No Re-cropping. As with the absence of filters, this isn’t really a limitation, as such–more a different way of doing things. Basically, you don’t have the option of cropping to square as part of the actual upload process. You can, of course, use Lightroom’s vastly more flexible cropping tools before you hit the publish button.

But a related feature that is built into the LR/Instagram plugin is the ability to pad the sides of an image. I have more details on it below.

I’ve put together a separate guide for an alternative way of creating square photos for posting on Instagram. That method builds it into the export process, so it’s not directly compatible with the LR/Instagram publish service (unless you re-import the export photos, that is).

No In-photo Tagging. You can tag people in the caption field, but you can’t tag them on the photo itself like you can with the Instagram app.

No Scheduling. There are apps that do scheduling, like Gramblr, but Instagram generally frowns on scheduling–at least, in an automated way–so this plugin isn’t unusual in not offering scheduling. But it’s something to be aware of, nevertheless.

No Multi-image Posts. You can upload multiple images at once, but each image will post as its own single post. There’s no support for the new Instagram feature of using multiple images in a single post.

How to Use LR/Instagram

Installing LR/Instagram

It installs just like any other plugin. Download the plugin file, copy it to wherever you’re saving your Lightroom plugins, and open the Plugin Manager from within Lightroom. Use the Add button to select the new plugin, and then make sure it’s enabled.

LR/Instagram Publish Service Plugin Manager

If you decide to buy a license for the plugin, you enter the registration details here in the Plugin Manager.

The one panel that’s a little different with this one is the option to use an HTTP Proxy. You’d use that if you’re on a network that is otherwise blocking access to social media sites like Instagram. In most cases, you probably don’t need to enter anything there and can leave it off (the default).

Creating the LR/Instagram Settings

Creating and setting up the LR/Instagram Publish Service is just like any other publish service. Create a new instance by clicking on the + icon at the top right of the Publish Services panel in the library module and choose to Go to Publishing Manager.

Just under the list of Publish Services at left, click on the Add button.

In the popup, choose the type of publish service from the drop-down menu–in this case you want LR/Instagram.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Create

Then give the publish service a name (you can change it later, if you want).
If you’re only setting up one instance, it really doesn’t matter what you enter here. But if you’re working with multiple Instagram accounts, it makes sense to put the account names in here to differentiate them.

Configuring the LR/Instagram Settings

As with any other Lightroom publish service, you have to configure some options when you first create the publish service.

You can go back and edit these later, if you wish, by right-clicking on the publish service’s name and choosing Edit Settings.

Some publish services have a bunch of option panels. This one only has a few.

LR/Instagram Publish Service Publish Service Settings

The next panel is for logging into Instagram. Add your Instagram username and password. It will then authenticate the login information.

Once you’ve entered your credentials and are logged in, it shows something like the screenshot above, with your Instagram username, your real name, and it’ll pull your profile picture.

Tip: If you’re working with multiple Instagram accounts, make sure to enter the login credentials that correspond to the account you want this publish service to use.

The next panel is where the real options are.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Preferences

The top one limits the number of photos that can be included with a single publish action. There are two reasons this might come in handy. One is to prevent your account from flooding your followers’ feeds with new photos. The other is that it reduces the risk of triggering Instagram’s anti-spam defenses. The default is 5–that’s a good place to start.

The next option is for controlling how the plugin deals with images you might delete from Lightroom. You can choose whether or not the images will remain on Instagram.

The force padding to square option is a way for dealing with rectangular images. You can now post rectangular images to Instagram, but if you still prefer the square layout, you can use an option in the plugin to pad the sides to fill out the square. Check the box to enable the option and then choose the color that you’d like to use for the padding border.

The final option controls the metadata that’s included as the Instagram caption. You can choose one of the existing templates or create your own. The title and caption fields are the standard Lightroom fields corresponding to Title and Description. LR/Instagram creates its own Caption field and then automatically populates it with the information from the Lightroom Description field, but you can also edit it independently, so you can edit the Caption field without messing up the original Description field. The Hashtag field is a special field that’s installed with the LR/Instagram plugin.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Caption Builder

Of course, one of the many powerful aspects of Lightroom is that you can draw on a huge variety of metadata for all sorts of things. With this plugin, you can build a Custom Template that draws on that information. Maybe you want to include the data and time in the Instagram caption. Or the camera model and exposure settings. Or the location and GPS information. You can find the full list of available tokens here.

Here’s a quick example that builds a caption automatically by pulling in the camera, lens, and exposure information and generates a hashtag based on the camera brand.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Caption Builder Custom

Here’s a different version that adds a location byline to the beginning of the caption, adds GPS coordinates if they’re available, and creates hashtags for the city and country.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Caption Builder Custom Location

The final two options are familiar Lightroom ones: whether to apply sharpening and whether to add a watermark. Do not, however, that if you’re applying a watermark as well as using the force padding to square option you can end up with some undesirable results.

Publishing with LR/Instagram

The publish process is fundamentally the same as any other Lightroom publish service. Drag the photos you want to use from the Library onto the “Instagram photos” collection in the publish service panel.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Drag and Drop

Then click on the publish service’s collection and customize the metadata you want to use. To enable these metadata fields, use the drop-down menu in the metadata panel at right to select LR/Instagram.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Metadata Panel.jpeg

Bear in mind that how the information in these fields is used when posting depends on how you’ve set up the caption builder in the publish service’s settings (see above).

Once you’re happy with the photos and the metadata, hit the Publish button at top right.

Lightroom LR/Instagram Publish Service Publish Button

The photos will then be uploaded directly to Instagram. Each photo will be posted as a separate post, and they’ll all post immediately.

Updating Captions

Even after you’ve published the photos to Instagram, you can edit the captions within Lightroom and have them updated on Instagram. To do that, edit the caption or hashtag fields in the metadata panel. That alone won’t automatically trigger the republish action, so you’ll need to then right-click on the thumbnails and select Mark to Republish. Then you’ll have to hit the Publish button again.

Worth Noting

This plugin is still pretty young, and the developers are still adding new features. The guide above uses v. 0.6.1524. If you’re using a newer version, it’s possible that more features might have been added since.

Where to Get It

It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. (UPDATE: The developers appear to have abandoned this plugin, and it’s no longer a viable way to upload images directly to Instagram.)

David Coleman / Photographer

David Coleman

I'm a freelance travel photographer based in Washington DC. Seven continents, up mountains, underwater, and a bunch of places in between. My images have appeared in numerous publications, and you can check out some of my travel photography here. I've been using Lightroom for years, from back before it was Lightroom (RawShooter). More »

42 thoughts on “How to Post to Instagram Directly from Lightroom”

    • While this particular option for going from Lightroom directly to Instagram isn’t available anymore, there are other ways to post directly from a computer to Instagram (though not directly from Lightroom). I’ve put together a rundown of the options here.

      Reply
  1. The developer of the lrinstagram says on his website that the plugin is no longer working, due to Instagram changing their policies. There is no way of posting directly to IG from Lightroom at this time.

    Reply
  2. Oh this is fantastic! The thing I didn’t know I was looking for until I found it. Thanks so much for this blog, it’s just made my life much easier!

    Reply
  3. Hello,

    I got the following message when trying to post a picture vis LR/INstagram plugin : attempt to index field ‘media'(a nil value) (1). Has someone experienced this kind of issue?

    Thanks for your help.

    Pierre

    Reply
    • On their website, they say: “Plugin is compatible with Adobe Lightroom CC, or LR 3.0 (or later),
      on Windows XP (or later) and Mac OS X 10.7 (or later).” But I haven’t tried it myself on LR3.

      Reply
    • when im on lightroom, the publish services tab does not pop up and not showing up, ive been looking up how to get it but nothing works please help.

      Reply
    • Are you dropping your photos into the light grey rectangle under LR/Instagram in the Published Services panel? There is an icon of a folder overlaid with arrows pointing left and right.

      Reply
  4. I have a problems which I can not sort or find on Google !!!

    With windows 7 64bit and LRInstagram (v. 0.6.1524) on LRoom 2015.1 I get the error message:

    CURLE_COULDNT_CONNET error 7 when I try to connect.

    Any help please
    Thansk

    Reply
    • This is what the LRInstagram developers say about that error in the FAQ on their site:

      CURL ERROR 7: This error indicates a connection error. Plugin does not use system-wide proxy settings, so if you need a proxy to connect to outside world, you need to configure HTTP Proxy settings in Lightroom Plugin Manager.

      Reply
  5. It’s great but I cannot get Hashtags to show in Lightroom, I’ve mailed the developer but not had a reply, has anyone else had this ?

    Win10
    LR 6.13

    Reply
  6. Do you know if RAW files can be converted to JPEG prior to the upload? If there is, I seem to be missing that option… Any thoughts on how to streamline that workflow?

    Reply
  7. I’m running LR 5.7 and it’s suddenly saying error and asking for login info to publish to IG. Tried logging in and out. No luck. Also tried rebooting. Any ideas?

    Reply
    • No, I don’t know of a way to do it. From memory, re-publishing to replace the image doesn’t work, but it’s been a while since I tried.

      Reply
  8. The logout/login fix doesn’t work. Sometimes it works. sometimes it doesn’t. If it worked consistently. I would pay the $10. I really like it when it works.

    Reply
      • On Instagram’s developer site I got the the impression Instagram no longer allows you to use the interactive api this way unless you have been registered as an official api user with them. If that is so it is not something the developer can fix. We have to appeal to Instagram but I suppose they have reason to enforce a stricter security policy.

        Reply
  9. hey Guys, i want to log in with my account.

    if i try this, i get a Log in error, but the password is correct.
    i tried it with an different password then i got also an different report.

    what i can do?

    Reply
    • What fixed it for me was to go into the publish settings for that publish service (right click on the name), hit logout from the account section, and then log in again. It will then re-authenticate.

      Reply
    • I just tested and initially ran into the same problem. The way I fixed it was to go into the publish settings for that publish service (right click on the name), hit logout from the account section, and then log in again. It will then re-authenticate. It’s working normally again for me. It’s possible that something about the recent update of Lightroom to 2015.12 messed up something in the service’s credentials. I’m using the latest version of LRInstagram (v. 0.6.1524).

      Reply

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