Since 2007 and Lightroom 1.0, The Turning Gate has been creating top-tier plugins for Lightroom’s Web module, and has time after time redefined what is possible for Lightroom-to-website publishing. April marks our ninth anniversary, and the beginning of The Turning Gate’s next era, in which we redefine the entire paradigm of what we do.

Say goodbye to Lightroom’s Web module, and “Hello!” to Backlight.

Backlight is a self-hosted, web-based application. It sets up easily on your web hosting, and allows you to create and design your galleries or website in real-time, using your web-browser. Using our Publisher plugin, you will utilize Lightroom’s Publish Services to create and manage albums and album sets from within your library. Whether TTG veteran or novice, you’re going to love the new ease that Backlight brings to building your website!

Backlight is not a cloud service, and will not be subscription-based.

To be absolutely clear, we are finished creating plugins for Lightroom’s Web module, and so there will not be a CE5 series of releases.

We expect to begin beta testing Backlight within the next few weeks, with a probable launch being end of April or sometime in May. Cart and client proofing features will not be available at launch, but will follow shortly thereafter.

Now, you might be wondering what this means for CE4.

While Backlight will be occupying the majority of our focus and the entirety of the spotlight, CE4 will remain available in our shop. We plan to continue maintenance and support for CE4 for the full lifespan of Lightroom 6 / CC2015 at least. Possibly longer, if realistic to do so.

In the coming weeks, we will have more details to share on Backlight. With all that we have planned for Backlight, the rest of 2016 is going to be very exciting for us, and we hope for you as well. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, feel free to pose questions in the comments of this post. Some details we’d like to keep close to our chests a bit longer, but we will answer what we can.

Update: Because it’s what we do in 2016, there’s more conversation happening on Facebook than here in the comments. If you’d like to participate, come on over to the TTG Users Group.