Editor's note: The 2026 class of my Lightroom Classic Secrets course is open for enrollment now. Learn the tips, techniques and secrets used by the Lightroom masters. Click here for the details. Thanks for reading, Andrew.
If you’re a Lightroom Classic subscriber you can use Adobe Portfolio to create your own portfolio website.
One of Adobe Portfolio’s best features is that it lets you make up to five different websites. You might think you only need one, but you can make the most out of this feature by creating both official and personal portfolio websites. This has some surprising creative benefits. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Your official portfolio website in Adobe Portfolio
Your official portfolio website is the one that has your best photos. It’s the one you put on your business card or email signature. It’s your showcase for people who want to see your best work (click here to view my official portfolio website).
While most photographers only need one website, some may want to use more. If you work across two different disciplines, like portrait photography and food photography (for example), it may be simpler to have a portfolio website (and different domain) for each one.
Your personal portfolio websites in Adobe Portfolio
That leaves three or four Adobe Portfolio websites that don’t get used. These are your personal portfolio websites.
A personal portfolio website is just for you (and anybody else you care to share it with).
Tip: If privacy is a concern, you can restrict access to the entire with a password by going to Settings > Password Protection.
Extra tip: You can password protect individual galleries by clicking the arrow next to the Settings icon and selecting Add Page Password from the menu.
For example, I’m in the process of building a personal portfolio website for my garden and nature photography. I’m slowly going through my old garden and nature photos and creating new galleries like the ones below.
The idea is that when I’m finished I’ll be able to see all my garden and nature photos together in one place. I can see links between my old photos and my current projects. It will give me ideas for the gardens I’d like to visit next year and the projects I’d like to work on.
I’m also going to build two other personal portfolio websites. One will be for photos of my son Alex. The idea is that I have all my best photos of him together in one place. I can give the url to family and friends so they can see the photos too.
The third portfolio website will be for all my photos that don’t go on the other two.
Learn more: How To Turn Old Photos Into New Photography Projects
Using your personal portfolio websites to organize your photos
One of the big benefits of using personal portfolio websites is that they help you organize your photos.
This is how it works.
1. Collections and Collection Sets. Use Collections and Collection Sets to organize your photos within Lightroom Classic. All your developed photos should be in synced Collections so you can add them to a Adobe Portfolio website.
2. Build your portfolio website. Use the synced Collections to create galleries in your personal portfolio websites using Adobe Portfolio.
The benefits of this are:
- You can use a different organizational structure on your portfolio websites than you do in Lightroom Classic, creating Collections (groups of galleries) to help organize your images.
- You don’t have to include every developed photo in your portfolio galleries. You can be more selective. It’s easier to remove a photo from a gallery than it is from a Lightroom Classic Collection.
This is helpful as it gives you a way of viewing only your best photos. In Lightroom Classic your other photos are still there. They muddy the viewing experience.
In your portfolio website, you only see the photos you choose to add to your galleries, which you have the freedom to organize and group however you want.
3. Decide how to use your photos. The more photos I make the more strongly I believe in turning the best ones into physical items like prints, zines and photo books (with zines being my favorite medium).
Learn more: Why Making Prints Makes You A Better Photographer
Once you’ve organized your photos, you can decide what to do with them. Some of them will end up on your official portfolio website or on websites like Flickr and Instagram.
The best may end up as prints hanging on your wall, or included in zines and photo books.
This diagram shows the process.
Hopefully this helps you see how you can use portfolio websites as an organizational tool. I see them as intermediary step between Lightroom Classic and tangible items like zines, prints and photo books. They’re great for viewing on tablets and phones, and convenient to show to other people.
The Creative Photographer
My ebook The Creative Photographer explores seven ways that you can become a better photographer by focusing on the creative aspects of photography. Click the link to learn more or buy.
2 comments
Hi Andrew,
With Adobe Portfolio is there a way to nest pages. For example my main categories are (in CAPS):
PEOPLE – and underneath would be Portraits, Weddings, Models, etc…
Then under Weddings, for example, would be Whittaker Wedding, Harding Wedding, etc…
EVENTS – and underneath would be Festivals, Concerts, Conferences
Then, for example, under Concerts would be individual bands like Kansas, Allman Brothers, Gino Vannelli, etc…
I tried to do this a few years ago and the program did not support it. Has anything changed in the last few years to make this possible?
Thanks!
Hi Doug, yes you can do it, it’s very easy. You can arrange your galleries into what are called Collections. They’re nothing to do with Lightroom Classic Collections, but groups of galleries under separate headings. The feature has always been there but is easy to miss. When you’re editing a website go to Essentials > Pages, click the big blue plus icon at the bottom and select Collection from the options. That will get you started.
You can’t put a Collection inside a Collection, so you can’t quite get what you want with People > Weddings etc but you can probably figure out a way to make it look neat.