Keptfolio - Setup & Usage Guide

1. Before you start

What Keptfolio does

Keptfolio turns the galleries you already keep in Lightroom Classic into a hosted portfolio website. You group photos into collections, click Publish, and your site goes live at a web address of your own, like yourname.keptfolio.com. Change a photo, reorder a gallery, or fix a caption in Lightroom, publish again, and the live site follows in seconds.

There is no separate website builder to learn. The way you organize in Lightroom is the way your site is built. Hosting is included, so there is nothing to set up or run yourself.

One naming note: inside Lightroom, Keptfolio shows up as a publish service called Portfolio Website. You will see that name in the Publish Services panel and in a few menu items. It is the same product, just its name inside Lightroom.

What you need

• Adobe Lightroom Classic (the desktop version) 6 or later, on macOS or Windows. The cloud-based "Lightroom" (formerly Lightroom CC) is not supported.
• A Keptfolio subscription - $49 a year, hosting included. Your license key arrives by email after you sign up.
• A web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Arc) for the design step. You already have one.
• An internet connection when you publish. Your photos live in Lightroom on your own computer. Publishing sends web-sized copies to your hosted site.

Install the plugin

1. Download and unzip the Keptfolio plugin from lightroom-tools.com/downloads/portfolio-plugin.zip (it is also on your confirmation page right after you sign up). On Windows, right-click the zip and choose Extract All (don't just open it), and extract to your Documents or Desktop - not C:\Program Files, which Windows locks and the plugin won't load from. You'll end up with a folder named portfolio.lrplugin.
2. Open the Plug-in Manager in Lightroom Classic: File > Plug-in Manager.
3. Click Add, then select the portfolio.lrplugin folder itself (the one containing the plugin files) and choose Select Folder.
4. Click Done. "Portfolio Website" now appears in the Publish Services panel, on the left side of the Library module.

Your license key

There is no separate "activate" step to hunt for. The first time you set up your site, a short wizard asks you to paste the license key from your welcome email. That connects your subscription and you are on your way. The next section walks through it.

2. Easy start - your first 15 minutes

Six steps. By the end you will have a real, designed portfolio online at your own web address.

Step 1 - Open the setup wizard

In the Library module, go to Library > Plug-in Extras > Set Up Portfolio Website.... (You can also click the Set Up button on the Portfolio Website publish service in the Publish Services panel.) The wizard opens.

Step 2 - Paste your license key

Copy the key from your welcome email and paste it in. A line below the key notes that by connecting you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, with a small View... button if you want to read them first. Continue.

Step 3 - Claim your web address

Type the name you want. Your site will live at that-name.keptfolio.com. Your name usually works well. Pick carefully - this becomes your permanent address, so it is worth a moment's thought. Confirm to claim it.

Step 4 - Add your details

Enter your site title (usually your name - it becomes the headline), a short about, a contact email, and your Instagram if you want one shown. Finish the wizard.

Step 5 - Make a gallery and add photos

In the Publish Services panel, under Portfolio Website, create a published collection (right-click the service and choose to create a collection). Name it something like 01 Weddings. Drag photos into it from your catalog. Each gallery becomes a page on your site.

Step 6 - Publish

Select your gallery and click the Publish button. Keptfolio uploads your photos and your site goes live. When it finishes, a one-time Choose My Style dialog opens your browser so you can pick a look, choose cover photos, and arrange your galleries.

And that is it - you just put a designed portfolio online without building a single web page.

3. The full workflow - Set Up, Organize, Publish, Design, Update

Keptfolio is a simple loop. You set up once, then you live in the last four steps.

3.1 Set Up - once

The setup wizard connects your subscription, claims your web address, and captures your title, about, and contact details. You do this once. After that, the Set Up option becomes a Reconnect... button you only touch if you ever need to repair your connection or move to a new computer.

3.2 Organize - your galleries are your pages

This is where you spend your time, and it is all in Lightroom. Each published collection under Portfolio Website becomes one page on your site.

• Name galleries with a number in front to control their order in your site menu. 01 Weddings, 02 Portraits, 03 Travel show up as "Weddings", "Portraits", "Travel" in that order. The number is just for sorting and never appears on your site.
• Drag photos into the order you want. The order you set inside a gallery is the order visitors see. (Set your gallery's sort to "Custom Order" if it is not already, then drag.)
• Titles and captions carry over. Add them in Lightroom's Metadata panel. A caption shows in the full-screen viewer; a title becomes the photo's alt text for search engines and screen readers.

Have a whole collection set already built the way you like it? Bring it all in at once with Library > Plug-in Extras > Import Collection Set into Portfolio... instead of recreating each gallery by hand.

3.3 Publish - your site goes live

Select a gallery and click Publish. Keptfolio prepares two web-sized copies of each photo (a crisp thumbnail for the grid and a larger one for the full-screen viewer) and uploads them. Your original files never leave Lightroom. When it is done, you get a View My Website button that opens your live site.

Publishing is smart about your time: only photos that actually changed get uploaded again. Reorder a gallery or fix a caption and the next publish is quick. To push every gallery at once, use Library > Plug-in Extras > Publish All Galleries Now.

3.4 Design - in your browser

Your site's look lives in your browser, not in Lightroom. After your first publish, the Choose My Style dialog opens the design editor automatically. You can return to it anytime with the Customize in Browser... button in the publish service settings.

It opens on a template gallery - a "Choose your gallery" wall of ready-made designs. Pick one and you step into a full-screen editor with a live preview of your own photos. From there you can:

• Pick a template made for your kind of work - flagship designs for weddings, fashion, travel, food, family, architecture, fine-art, landscape, portrait, and street work, plus the originals. Each comes in five color schemes from light to dark, and a set of named color palettes works on any template. Switching is one click and never re-uploads your photos - only the design changes.
• Choose what your home page shows - a full-screen cover, a split of your best image beside your name, a crossfading slideshow, or no hero at all, plus optional "Kind words" reviews and an About page. Toggle each on or off.
• Add a touch of motion - upload a short looping video as your hero and it plays gently on desktop (more below).
• Choose a cover photo for each gallery.
• Manage your private galleries - copy the link for a review or client download gallery, watch a delivery count down, and read review feedback (more below).
• Drag to reorder your galleries right there in the browser, if you would rather arrange them here than by renaming in Lightroom.
• Fine-tune the layout with two simple sliders (how many covers per row, and how large the photos sit).

One thing worth knowing: your design is safe. Keptfolio keeps your look and your Lightroom content in separate lanes. Publishing again from Lightroom updates your photos and never overwrites the style you picked in the browser.

3.5 Update - keep it fresh

Updating is just editing in Lightroom and clicking Publish again. Add photos, swap an edit, reorder, change a caption, or remove a shot - publish, and the live site follows.

If you only changed the order or captions (no photo edits), there is a shortcut: Library > Plug-in Extras > Update Website Now pushes those small changes without a full re-publish. It is a handy safety net when you just want the site to match Lightroom.

4. Every menu item and control, explained

Here is every control Keptfolio adds, grouped by where you find it.

In the Publish Services panel

The Portfolio Website service sits in the Publish Services panel on the left of the Library module. This is home base.

• Published collections are your galleries. Create one, name it (a number prefix sets its order), and drag photos in.
• Publish uploads a selected gallery and puts your changes live.
• Site Details (in the service's settings) points you to the browser editor's Details tab, where your title, about, contact, and social links live - see below.
• Customize in Browser... opens the design editor to change your style, site text, covers, and layout.
• Reconnect... repairs your connection or moves your site to a new computer. It does not change your address or your galleries.

Library > Plug-in Extras menu items

Set Up Portfolio Website...

Starts the first-run wizard: paste your key, claim your web address, add your details. You only run this once. After setup it becomes the Reconnect... button in the service settings.

Import Collection Set into Portfolio...

Turns an existing collection set into galleries in one go. Use it when you already have your work organized into collections and would rather not rebuild each gallery by hand. Every collection in the set becomes a gallery, ready to publish.

Publish All Galleries Now

Publishes every gallery at once, instead of selecting and publishing each one. Use it after a big round of edits, or the first time you want your whole site live in a single step.

Update Website Now

Pushes reorder-only and caption-only changes without a full re-publish. Use it when you rearranged galleries or edited captions but did not touch the photos themselves. It is the quick way to make the live site match Lightroom.

Fetch Review Ratings...

Brings a reviewer's feedback into your catalog. Pick the gallery, pick whose submission (if more than one person reviewed it), then choose how to apply it: Replace all ratings overwrites your stars with theirs, while Only unrated photos fills in stars just where you have none. Their stars become Lightroom star ratings, their Keeps become flags, and anything they rejected comes back as a Lightroom reject flag - so clearing the throwaways is just Photo > Delete Rejected Photos. Photos the reviewer skipped are never touched, and their written notes stay on the feedback page - nothing is typed into your metadata.

Designing your site in the browser

The design editor opens from the Choose My Style dialog after your first publish, or anytime from Customize in Browser.... Everything here is a live preview, and nothing you do re-uploads your photos.

Choose a template

The editor opens on a full-window template gallery - the "Choose your gallery" wall. Pick a design and it drops you into the editor with a live preview. A gold "Live" mark shows which one is currently on your site; a ring shows the one you are previewing. Save to make a preview your live look. Click Templates in the toolbar anytime to browse the wall again.

There's a growing library to choose from. The Featured designs are each built for a kind of photography:

• Heirloom - weddings, in warm champagne and rosewood.
• Muse - fashion and editorial, bone white and ink black.
• Meridian - travel and lifestyle, with a crossfading destination hero.
• Tavola - food and restaurants, every dish plated on a card.
• Hearth - family and newborn, one warm unhurried scroll.
• Plumb - architecture and interiors, every line true.
• Argent - fine-art black and white, one print at a time.
• Massif - landscape and wilderness, horizons edge to edge.
• Candor - portraits and personal branding, name and face together.
• Grain - street and documentary, honest and unpolished.

The original styles are still here too - Frame (exhibition catalog), Crisp (bright and minimal), Press (bold magazine), Folio (quiet and literary), Studio (warm framed cards), Reel (cinematic full-screen), and Atlas (expedition journal), among others. Every template comes in five color schemes from light to dark.

Color palettes

Under Style you'll find a shelf of named color palettes - Ivory, Monochrome, Oxblood, Lagoon, Rosewood, and more. Any palette works on any template, so you can borrow one design's colors for another. "Signature" keeps the palette the template was designed with.

Cover photos

Pick the photo that represents each gallery on your home page. If you do not choose one, the first photo in the gallery is used.

Reorder galleries

Drag your galleries into the order you want. This is the same ordering you can set with number prefixes in Lightroom - use whichever feels easier. If you arrange them here, this order wins.

Layout sliders

Two simple controls: covers per row (how many gallery covers sit side by side on your home page) and photo size (how large photos appear inside a gallery). Both update live as you drag, so you can dial in the look you want by eye.

Your details (the Details tab)

The text side of your site - the parts that are about you rather than your photos. It used to sit inside Lightroom; now it's here, so you see every word on your actual site as you type it.

• Site title - usually your name. It becomes your site's headline.
• Tagline - a short line under your title on the home page, like "Wedding & portrait photographer, Tel Aviv".
• About - the full text of your About page. Start typing and the preview jumps to that page so you can watch it take shape. Leave it empty and the page won't appear.
• Contact email - how visitors reach you.
• Social links - Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube, and WhatsApp. Paste your profile link or just type your handle. Fill one in and its icon appears in your footer; leave it blank and it stays hidden - no empty icons. A WhatsApp number becomes a one-tap chat link.

Home page sections (the Sections tab)

Your home page is yours to shape. Under Sections you decide what visitors see first:

• Hero - a full-screen cover photo, a split of your best image beside your name, a crossfading slideshow, or none at all.
• Kind words - a section of short client reviews. Add the reviews under the Reviews tab; switch the section on or off here.
• About - show or hide your About page and its menu link.

Your template's own default is marked, so leaving everything alone gives you the clean designed look out of the box.

Hero motion (a looping video)

Want a little life on your home page? Under Sections, in the Hero motion area, you can add a short looping video (MP4, up to 10 MB). It plays quietly on desktop over your hero photo, which stays the still fallback. On phones, and for anyone who prefers reduced motion, it falls back to the still image, so your site always loads fast. Add or replace it anytime; remove it and the still hero comes back.

Three kinds of gallery (the Galleries tab)

Every gallery has a type, chosen in Lightroom: right-click the published collection, choose Edit Collection, and pick under Gallery type. There are three, and each does one job well:

• Portfolio gallery - your public website. On your menu and home page, open to everyone, photos displayed beautifully at web size. This is the default.
• Review gallery - one private link for choosing photos together, protected by a passphrase you set right there in Lightroom. Whoever you send it to can swipe through the photos on their phone - left to reject, right to keep - or rate and pick them one by one; nothing shows on your public site. More below.
• Client download gallery - a private, passphrase-protected delivery of the true full-resolution files, which takes itself down when the job is done. More below.

How sharing works, precisely. The passphrase guards the gallery page. The photos inside sit at their own unlisted web addresses, which nobody can guess and which appear nowhere until someone unlocks the gallery. That has a useful side: if a client asks for "just that one shot", you can send them the single photo's link and it opens for them - no passphrase, no gallery, no fuss. The flip side is the honest bit: a photo link you send keeps working for whoever ends up with it, and changing the gallery's passphrase later closes the gallery page but not links you already sent. So share a gallery passphrase freely, and treat a direct photo link the way you would treat the photo itself. (The true full-resolution files are different - those only ever come through the gated download.)

Review and download galleries never appear on your menu, home page, or in search engines - only people you send the link and passphrase to can open them. The browser editor's Galleries tab shows a card for each gallery: copy its link, watch a delivery's state, read review feedback. If your site has a lot of galleries, use the search box at the top of the tab to filter the list by name as you type.

Deliver full-size photos to a client (a download gallery)

When you need to hand over the real, full-size files - a finished wedding, a delivered shoot - use a client download gallery. It sends your client the true full-resolution JPEGs and then quietly cleans up after itself. Here is the whole flow:

1. Set the gallery's type in Lightroom. Right-click the published collection and choose Edit Collection. Under Gallery type, switch it from Portfolio gallery to Client download gallery, keep (or reword) the suggested passphrase, and pick a download window of 3, 7, or 28 days. Save.
2. Publish it. Select the gallery and click Publish. You will see an extra "Preparing full-resolution files" pass - that is Keptfolio sending the full-size originals (full quality, never watermarked, always JPEG). Your master files never leave Lightroom.
3. Send the private link. Open the browser editor's Galleries tab, press Copy client link on the gallery, and send that link to your client together with the passphrase you set in Lightroom.
4. Your client downloads. They see a Download button on every photo, and a Download all button that hands over the whole album in one go (a very large album arrives as a few numbered parts). Nothing to sign up for.
5. You hear about it the moment they download. The first time your client downloads, we email you - so you know the photos landed without checking anything. The gallery's card in the editor's Galleries tab also flips to "Downloaded on [date] - comes down [date]", so you can see exactly where every delivery stands.
6. It takes itself down. The download window counts from your client's first download. When it runs out, the album leaves your site and its full-size files are deleted, and the link shows a gentle "no longer available - contact the photographer" page. A gallery nobody ever opens comes down on its own 90 days after publishing, so nothing lingers. This is on purpose: your deliveries stay private and your storage never fills up with old files.
7. End it early, or send it again. To close a delivery before the window is up, press Expire now on the gallery in the editor. To deliver the same gallery again - or re-send one that already came down - just click Publish on it in Lightroom and it goes back up with a fresh window.

One thing to know about scale: you can have up to 4,000 full-resolution photos live at once across your download galleries - room for several deliveries at the same time. It is only there to keep storage sensible; photos in expired galleries stop counting right away, and if you ever need more, ask us and we will raise it. The editor shows a small "N of 4,000" meter so you can see where you stand. All of this is included in your plan - no extra tier, no per-delivery fee.

A review gallery - let someone pick the keepers

Choosing the final photos is often a two-person job - you and the couple, you and an art director, you and a second shooter. A review gallery is one private link made for exactly that:

• Set it up in Lightroom - right-click the collection, Edit Collection, set the Gallery type to Review gallery, keep (or reword) the suggested passphrase, and publish. Then copy the link from the editor's Galleries tab and send it, together with the passphrase, to whoever is choosing.
• They rate - the link opens straight onto the rating page. They give each photo 1 to 5 stars, mark favorites with a Pick, and leave a short note. Their progress saves in their own browser as they go, so they can close the tab, come back the next day, and continue where they left off.
• They submit - one click sends everything to you. If they change their mind later, submitting again simply replaces their earlier feedback. If several people review the same gallery, none of them see each other's choices.
• You read it - back in the Galleries tab, View feedback shows each person's stars, picks, and notes next to the photos. You can delete a submission you no longer need.
• You pull it into Lightroom - run Fetch Review Ratings... from Plug-in Extras and the stars and picks land on the actual photos in your catalog. No retyping.

When the choosing is done, switch the gallery's type back to Portfolio (or delete the collection) and the review link comes off the web. Feedback that was already submitted is kept, so you can close the door and still fetch the results.

5. Tips for a portfolio that looks its best

• Edit tight. Twelve strong photos in a gallery beat forty average ones. A portfolio is your highlight reel, not your archive.
• Use number prefixes from the start. Name galleries 01 Weddings, 02 Portraits and so on. It sets your menu order for you, and you can renumber anytime.
• Lead each gallery with your strongest frame. The first photo sets the tone, and it is a natural pick for that gallery's cover.
• Set your galleries to Custom Order and drag. The sequence you arrange in Lightroom is exactly what visitors scroll through.
• Write captions where they add something. A caption shows in the full-screen viewer. A place, a story, or a client name earns its space; "IMG_4821" does not.
• Try a couple of styles before you settle. Switching is one click and never re-uploads a thing. See your real photos in Frame, then Reel, then pick.
• Split big bodies of work into more galleries. Each gallery holds up to 2,000 photos, but several focused galleries read better than one giant one.
• Cull with a review gallery, not a spreadsheet. Publish the candidates as a Review gallery, send its link and passphrase, and pull the stars straight back into Lightroom with Fetch Review Ratings....
• Hand the finished files to clients. Put a shoot in its own gallery, set its Gallery type to Client download in Lightroom, and publish - your client gets the true full-resolution JPEGs, the gallery stays off your public site, and the whole delivery cleans itself up after the window you pick.
• Fill in only the social links you actually use. Empty ones stay hidden, so your footer never shows a dead icon.

6. Real-world scenarios

Three ways photographers actually use Keptfolio. Find the one closest to you and follow its shape.

Wedding photographer - a client-ready site organized by service

You want a site that shows couples what you offer, split cleanly by type of work. In Lightroom, create published collections named 01 Weddings, 02 Engagements, 03 Portraits, and drag your best 20 to 30 frames into each. Publish all of them with Publish All Galleries Now. When the design editor opens, pick Frame or Press for a formal feel, choose a standout cover for each gallery, and add your contact email and Instagram in the Details tab. Your booking link now points at yourstudio.keptfolio.com, and next season you just drag new work into the same galleries and publish again.

Travel hobbyist - a personal showcase from a big catalog

You have years of trips in one catalog and want a simple, beautiful home for the highlights. Make a gallery per place - 01 Iceland, 02 Kyoto, 03 Patagonia - and pull in only the frames you are proud of. Set each gallery to Custom Order and arrange the story you want to tell. Publish, then choose Atlas in the design editor for its journal feel, and pick a hero cover for each trip. Add a short about paragraph. You now have a shareable site you can hand to anyone, and adding your next trip is one new gallery away.

Portrait pro - moving off a hand-built website

You already keep your work in a tidy collection set and are tired of rebuilding a website by hand every time it changes. Run Import Collection Set into Portfolio... and your whole set becomes galleries in one step. Publish them, then open the design editor, pick Studio or Reel, choose covers, and drag the galleries into the order you want visitors to see. From now on your site and your catalog are the same thing: edit in Lightroom, publish, done. No more keeping two copies of your portfolio in sync.

7. Frequently asked questions

Setup and subscription

Galleries and publishing

Design and your web address

Sharing with clients

Privacy and your photos

Billing and support

8. Troubleshooting

Publishing a big gallery is crawling, or looks stuck

Keep Lightroom in front. macOS slows down apps that are not the app you are currently using, and Lightroom is doing the heavy work here - preparing hundreds of full-size photos. In our own test, a 350-photo delivery prepared photos twenty times faster with Lightroom in front than when we switched to another app. So if you start a big publish and then go and do email, it will take hours instead of minutes.

Start the publish, leave Lightroom as the front window, and let it run. A large client delivery has three steps - the photos for your website, the previews for the gallery grid, and then the full-size files your client downloads - and the progress bar names the step and counts the photos as it goes. The third step is the slow one: those are big files, and they have to be prepared and then sent to your website.

If you would rather keep working while a delivery uploads, you can tell macOS to stop slowing Lightroom down. Quit Lightroom, open the Terminal app, paste this line, press Return, then start Lightroom again:

defaults write com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

That is a Lightroom setting, not a Keptfolio one - it applies to everything Lightroom does in the background. To undo it, run the same line with NO at the end.

Setup says it cannot reach the service

This is almost always your internet connection. Confirm you are online and try again. If a company firewall or VPN is in the way, switch it off for a moment and re-run Set Up Portfolio Website....

My key will not activate

Copy the key straight from your welcome email to avoid a stray space at the start or end. Make sure you are using your Keptfolio key, not a key from a different Lightroom Tools plugin. If it still will not take, send us the email you bought with and we will sort it out.

I published, but my site looks unchanged

Your page is briefly cached for speed. The View My Website button opens a fresh copy right away. If you typed the address by hand, just refresh the page a moment later and your update appears.

My galleries are in the wrong order

Check your gallery names. Number prefixes (01, 02, 03) set the order, and galleries without a number sort after the numbered ones. If you dragged galleries into order in the design editor, that arrangement wins - open the editor to adjust it there.

A photo shows in the wrong spot inside a gallery

Set that gallery's sort to Custom Order in Lightroom, drag the photo where you want it, then run Update Website Now (or Publish). If the gallery is on a different sort, the site may not follow your drag.

The design editor looks empty or a gallery is missing

Publish the gallery first. The editor shows what is live on your site, so a gallery you have not published yet will not appear there. After publishing, the editor refreshes on its own when you switch back to it.

A client or reviewer cannot open a protected gallery

Check that you shared the exact passphrase from the collection's settings in Lightroom (right-click the collection, Edit Collection) - passphrases are case-sensitive. To change it, type a new one in that same dialog and save; the site follows immediately, then send the new passphrase. If a review link shows "not found", the collection's Gallery type is no longer Review gallery - set it back and the same address works again. Only your review and download galleries are locked; the rest of your site stays open.

Fetch Review Ratings left some photos without stars

That is the plugin being careful. Photos the reviewer never rated are left exactly as they were - fetching never zeroes anything out. And if you chose Only unrated photos, photos that already had your own stars were deliberately skipped; run it again with Replace all ratings if you want the reviewer's stars everywhere.

My client says the download gallery is gone

That is the download window doing its job - the gallery came down after the days you set (counted from their first download), or after the 90-day backstop if it was never opened. Nothing is lost on your side: your photos are still in Lightroom. To send it again, just click Publish on that collection and it goes back up with a fresh window. Share the link again from the Galleries tab.

The photos have no Download button

The full-resolution files have not been published yet. Setting a gallery's type to Client download in Edit Collection does not send the files on its own - click Publish on that gallery and watch for the "Preparing full-resolution files" pass. Once it finishes, the Download and Download all buttons appear.

My hero video will not play

Hero motion plays on desktop only, and only when your home page is set to show a hero. On phones, and for visitors who have reduced motion turned on, it deliberately falls back to the still image - that is expected. Make sure the clip is an MP4 and under 10 MB; if it is larger, shorten or re-export it and upload again under Sections > Hero motion.

Still stuck?

The contact form on the home page goes straight to me. Solo developer, personal responses, usually same-day.

9. Need help?

The fastest way to reach us is email: support@lightroom-tools.com. A real person reads every message and replies, usually within a day. Tell us what you were doing and what happened - a screenshot always helps.

Something not working, or a question this page did not answer? Tell us what is going on - we read every message and usually reply within a day. You can also read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy anytime.