Lightroom virtual copies question

One of the advantages of virtual copies is thet you can have several copies, each with different processing for later comparison. Is there a consensus as to where you can keep notes unique to each virtual copy of the processing used.? The ol' mind sometimes leaks too much to remember what I did to each virtual copy and the history list is sometimes too cryptic to help.

Notes is something I really need. If LR created a place for us to store such notes, it would not be in the metadata and would not follow the image out of LR. Maybe that's OK. However, it isn't an issue because they don't provide anywhere for notes.
Since I really needed to know what I do with various photos outside of LR (usually PS), I started using the metadata field Special Instructions (called Instructions in LR) for putting in notes. These fields are all pretty imited in length. Special Instructions is one of the longer one at 256 characters. So I don't give details, just the general direction of what I did.
Note, if you do this, it just might show up in displayed metadata information. For example, flickr displays this field. I figure people don't need to know EVERYTHING, so I strip out this field before I upload. I was doing other metadata munging anyway to merge my location fields into description, so it wasn't a big deal for me.
Judy

Similar Messages

Virtual Copies Question

I've made a couple of virtual copies of a photos and now I create a web page with them. My question is that when the web page or flash web page displays the photos all of the virtual copies have the same name as the original. Is there a way that the virtual copies can have a unique name?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
thanks,
foutjo

Look at the Metadata pane on right side of Library. Under the Filename is a spot for Copy name. Go use it!
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 2Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.5.1 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
See LR Links list at my http://donricklin.blogspot.for related sites.

Lightroom Virtual Copies when creating publish gallery

When I create a publish gallery, I have the option of creating virtual copies. However, I notice the virtual copy stays with the original image, along with showing in the publish gallery. I would have figured the copy would only show in the publish gallery. Since I can't immediately tell where the vitual copy is linked to, it makes it confusing sometimes if I go back to re-edit. I want to isolate the photo from the orignal copy so lightroom doesn't want to republish any future edits to that file. Using lightroom 3.6. I've searched on this behavior and haven't found any helpful information.
Any suggestions on how to more effectively use this in my workflow?

With "publish gallery" you mean a collection under a Publish Service?
I have not checked with LR4.2 how this behaves, but with normal collections you should get only the virtual copies as members.
But you can remove the masters from the collection, using the filter: when in the collection, choose only master files in the filter bar, no virtual copies nor videos. Then select them all and choose simple delete: this will not remove from catalog ( as a splash-delete would do), but simply revoke their collection membership. Unlock the filter and you should have only the virtual copies left in your collection.
Cornelia

Virtual copies are not synchronized in a second Lightroom catalogue although metadata are written in XMP and synchronization with metadata was selected

Dear community,
I operate one Mac with Lightroom 5.7 that is configured to store all metadata in xmp files. The Lightroom catalogue is stored locally on the Mac and only contains references to the images and their xmp files that are stored on a network device. There is another Mac with the same configuration having a separate local Lightroom catalogue and access to the same images on the network device.
At a starting point, both Lightroom catalogues are identical - they refer to the same images on the network device and contain the same metadata.
When I update image properties on the first Mac, these changes are reflected in the xmp file. After using the option "synchronize" with activated "metadata synchronization" on the second Mac, the modified image properties are visible on the second Mac. This is fine.
However, when I create a virtual copy on the first Mac, I realize that the corresponding xmp file gets updated. However, even after synchronization, the virtual copy is not visible on the second Mac. I may modify image properties of the original image and get these modifications replicated to the second Mac, but the virtual copies remain on the first Mac.
What needs to be done that also virtual copies get synchronized?
Thank you very mich for your support.
Best regards,
Peter

I do not doubt that File Export / File Import will work to transfer the virtual copies.
My question was related to the fact whether the imported folder should not previously exist on the second Mac.
Consider the following situation:
time = 0:
first Mac: folder A is in a first status
second Mac: folder A is in a first status
time = 1:
first Mac: folder A is in a second status, export folder A in second status
second Mac: folder A is in a first status, import folder A in second status
My question is: What happens with these two folder A on the second Mac? Does folder A in the Lightroom catalogue of the second Mac gets overwritten? Do I receive an error message because folder A is already present in the Lightroom catalogue?
I understand your answer that everything will be fine on the second Mac if there is no folder A at all at the second Mac while I import the new folder A. Under this assumption, I can import folder A and it will show the second status. Clearly.
My question is only related to the fact that there is already a folder A on the second Mac, with the same images, but with different metadata and/or virtual copies.

Lightroom 5 virtual copies disappear

HI there, just recently, maybe in the past couple months, anytime I make multiple virtual copies of images and then close and reopen lightroom, the copies have disappeared. I have a Mac with OSX 10.7.5. Thanks for any help.

How that happened I cannot answer!
To achieve the same I would- Select all images, press CTRL+' (the key with quote symbols) three times.
To view only the VCs (to delete?) you can filter for 'Attributes' and there is a toggle icon to show only VCs to the right of flags, stars, colors, etc.
You will need a smart collection to filter for VCs that have NOT been edited.

I cant see my virtual copies on Lightroom

I try to create virtual copies in LR, but they are NOT visible, all filter and flags are off. Any help?

"Not visible,..." Where may I ask? Lightroom Library? Windows/Mac File Explorer?
Virtual copies are only ever visible within Lightroom.
Pressing [S] will toggle "stack"s on/off for all VCs of the one master image thumbnail. Try pressing [S]
"all filter and flags are off.." does that include the "Kind" icons at the end of the 'Attributes' filter tool bar?

LR3 - Questions regarding virtual copies with different exposures and Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop

Hello,
I'm currently testing LR3. I have a master copy and 4 virtual copies with different exposures selected in LR3. I tought to myself that I could simply use the "Edit / In Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop" option and tune the resulting HDR image in Photoshop but it seems that Photoshop doesn't take in consideration the exposure changes I've made on the virtual copies in LR3. The 5 images are identifical in the HDR Pro tool.
Is there something I can do to about it ? Maybe there is a step I've forgot in my workflow or something ?
Maybe I could simply export the master and virtual copies to JPEGs and then import these in the Photoshop HDR Pro tool but I don't think I would get the same results right ?
Thank you for your help.

Depending on the image ISO and overall content, you can get some pleasing DR pickup using this routine over simply hitting the fill light slider up and the exposure slider down. I never really liked the PS approach since it seemed to require too much tweaking inside PS. I have experimented with LR/Enfuse and Photomatix plug-ins and have settled on Photomatix for my HDR exposures (both "real" with multiple images and "fake" with a single image as you have described). I think LR/Enfuse is donation ware so you might want to start there. In both cases, the resultant image still needs a little adjusting back in LR after it is automatically imported into the Library.
Jeff

Can you retrieve deleted virtual copies from Lightroom?

Hello,
I removed a catalog from LR3 and re-imported it and my develop settings are intact however, my virtual copies are all missing. Is there a way to get those copies re-imported back into LR or could they be in a cache file somewhere on my computer?
Help!!!
AlikMc

That depends on your OS and/or if you did change the defaults.
Look here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84313.html

Adobe Lightroom 4 - Some Questions / Help Needed

Hi everyone.
After advice from several experts, I've just purchased Adobe Lightroom 4. I've already got Photoshop CS5, but I was looking for something proper to organise my photos, plus I found Lightroom easier to do the sort of editing I am wanting to do. Now, I only really use photoshop for things like colour pops, or really in-depth editing. Anyway, I'm loving Lightroom so far, but there is some stuff I'm not very sure of, so I'd appreciate some help
1. Organising
Firstly, I'm not really sure how to organise. At the moment, I've just got lots of folders with random events in My Pictures on W7, so I might have a folder called April 11, which contains photos from that month but that might have been a wedding or an easter holiday or both. So it doesn't really work. \
I understand in Lightroom what catalogs are. But I know enough to know that I don't want to group mine into those, its getting too complicated. What I don't know though is the difference between a collection and a folder. Basically, I'm wanting to reimport and reorganise all my photos, so I want to put them into "events" as such like you can do on iPhoto on a mac, so I would have "France Summer Holiday 11" for example, or "Mia's Wedding". I'm not really sure on the best way to do this ...?
2. Editing
I've played around quite a bit so far, and I really like what I've seen. On a lot of photos, I've made a lot of changes. But from what I can see, these changes are stored merely in Lightroom itself. For example, at the moment I'm importing photos from my external disk into Lightroom, which then saves them in C://My Pictures/Lightroom/Pictures . When I go look at these photos in windows explorer which I know I have edited, it doesn't show any of the changes or editing I've done on them. Now I realise this is me being stupid, but why doesn't it? Supposing I then want to email that photo to a friend that I have edited? How would I do that? I don't want to have to open lightroom and export every single photo I edit? There must be a simpler way?
Likewise for backing up, because all my files are in subfolders within C:// My pictures / Lightroom / Pictures, to back up I was simply going to set up windows to copy that latter folder onto my external HDD everytime I plugged it in. This would be pointless however if it isn't physically overwriting the original photo with my edited version?
3. Editing 2
Something else I like to do is make lots of different edits to the same photo. For example, at the moment I'm editing a photo of a pier at night. I spent ages adjusting colours and lighting and so on, and now it looks great. But I would also like to save a copy of that photo with the "old age photo" effect preset on. Is this possible? and how do I do it? Other than obviously importing a duplicate?
4. & 5. & 6 - Misc:
4. Simple question - how do I add tags, keywords or comments if I haven't done it on import?
5. My camera doesn't have built in GPS. Is it possible for me to manually geotag photos (in a batch, say for a Summer Holiday to NY), could I manually add a geotag for all these photos?
6. I also forgot to add copyright information on import for some, is it possible to do this after import and how?
7. I normally shoot in JPEG. I probably shoot shoot in RAW as everyone tells me to do so. Are there any significant advantages in terms of quality, and for editing with?
Thanks for any help given. I appreciate this is a lot of questions, but I could really use the advice.

Hi William,
1. Organising
Firstly, I'm not really sure how to organise. At the moment, I've just got lots of folders with random events in My Pictures on W7, so I might have a folder called April 11, which contains photos from that month but that might have been a wedding or an easter holiday or both. So it doesn't really work. \
I understand in Lightroom what catalogs are. But I know enough to know that I don't want to group mine into those, its getting too complicated. What I don't know though is the difference between a collection and a folder. Basically, I'm wanting to reimport and reorganise all my photos, so I want to put them into "events" as such like you can do on iPhoto on a mac, so I would have "France Summer Holiday 11" for example, or "Mia's Wedding". I'm not really sure on the best way to do this ...?
I am not so sure if you understand *catalogs*.
You need a catalog, exactly 1 in my opinion. A catalog is a database. The Lightroom database, where records about your images are stored, including the pointers to your images, which are not inside a catalog! LR backups just does the backup of the catalog (i.e. a file ending .lrcat). You need to take care separately that your real images are backed up !
Inside your LR database the best way to organize is via collections - this will give you what you want with "France summer holiday 11" etc.
Folders are relatively unimportant, just storage buckets. They should be *handy portions*, I would prefer them with below 3000 images each, as there currently some bugs to those bigger ones.
Before you start with LR, you can organize your pictures in Mac Finder / WindowsExplorer.
Or you could do it with the help of LR, by copying your images over during import into the destination folders (and deleting today's folders afterwards after having verified that everything is fine).
A simple date-based structure will do, I'd recommend a root parent folder like "LR images", underneath one folder per year (\2010\, \2011\, \2012\...) and underneath them either
just one folder per month (LR can auto-create them for you)
or you create the folders in import dialog as e.g. "YYYY-MM-DD description of shoot", to have a mini-diary overview also in your OS.
Apart from that you create collections, either *dumb ones*, where you drag images into, or smart ones, where you specify criteria according to which they get auto-filled.
2. Editing
I've played around quite a bit so far, and I really like what I've seen. On a lot of photos, I've made a lot of changes. But from what I can see, these changes are stored merely in Lightroom itself. For example, at the moment I'm importing photos from my external disk into Lightroom, which then saves them in C://My Pictures/Lightroom/Pictures . When I go look at these photos in windows explorer which I know I have edited, it doesn't show any of the changes or editing I've done on them. Now I realise this is me being stupid, but why doesn't it? Supposing I then want to email that photo to a friend that I have edited? How would I do that? I don't want to have to open lightroom and export every single photo I edit? There must be a simpler way?
Likewise for backing up, because all my files are in subfolders within C:// My pictures / Lightroom / Pictures, to back up I was simply going to set up windows to copy that latter folder onto my external HDD everytime I plugged it in. This would be pointless however if it isn't physically overwriting the original photo with my edited version?
LR will never overwrite your original photos.
You can save most of the catalog content into the xmp-part of the original photo, which is either a sidecar-file (.xmp) or part of the file format, like for DNG, TIFF, PSD, JPG. To do so you select the image in LR and hit <ctrl> s. Or you set it up for continuous update, which creates a lot of operations while you play back and forth in develop.
I do that on my own, typically twice per file: once I am done with develop, once I am done with keywording and other metadata update.
LR contains records about your images, i.e. a set of instructions how they are to be interpreted. That is all.
So of course you need LR to export the result of these instructions, which is actually pretty quick.
To backup your images you need to do that just once, plus you backup your LR catalog. Or if you save xmp to the files, you can do another backup once xmp is ready.
I would not consider this pointless. You just have to think that there are 2 places with data for your images: the images themselves and a database with interpretation instructions.
3. Editing 2
Something else I like to do is make lots of different edits to the same photo. For example, at the moment I'm editing a photo of a pier at night. I spent ages adjusting colours and lighting and so on, and now it looks great. But I would also like to save a copy of that photo with the "old age photo" effect preset on. Is this possible? and how do I do it? Other than obviously importing a duplicate?
Yes, this is one of LR's beauties: you create a so-called *virtual copy*, which is just a 2nd record for the same original image file with different interpretation settings, like black-and-white, a different crop size, different development etc. You can have as many virtual copies as you like, and you'll see them as additional thumbnails.
Virtual copies are not saveable into xmp, though. There is another concept which is saveable into xmp: snapshots. but these are different states in develop history, and you do not see outside develop module that you have several.
If you export virtual copies e.g. to jpg one file per virutal copy will be created.
4. & 5. & 6 - Misc:
4. Simple question - how do I add tags, keywords or comments if I haven't done it on import?
5. My camera doesn't have built in GPS. Is it possible for me to manually geotag photos (in a batch, say for a Summer Holiday to NY), could I manually add a geotag for all these photos?
6. I also forgot to add copyright information on import for some, is it possible to do this after import and how?
7. I normally shoot in JPEG. I probably shoot shoot in RAW as everyone tells me to do so. Are there any significant advantages in terms of quality, and for editing with?
Thanks for any help given. I appreciate this is a lot of questions, but I could really use the advice.
ad 4: you use the library module, metadata panel to enter.
ad 5: you use the map module. Either you manually drop your images on a map, or you have a separate GPS track to load and have LR assign via matching time-stamps.
ad 6: like 4
ad 7: You don't need JPG from your camera, you can achieve better results viy LR from RAW. Yes, there are significant advantages as to editing headroom.
Overall, may I suggest my favorite learning material for LR? First watch Julieanne's Tutorial Videos.
Then go play and use Victoria Bampton's eBook or paper copy of her "Missing FAQs to LR4": http://www.lightroomqueen.com/books/adobe-lightroom-4-missing-faq/
Have fun,
Cornelia

Virtual copies not visible

Oh God, can some one PLEASE help me???I can't contact Adobe by phone,m too late and it says everyone else busy, try later...right.
I DID review as much as I could possibly read, and NOTHING is of help.
1. Made virtual copies, count goes up, can't see them in grid in library, develop, or in loupe. Thought they were stacked, but when I went to Photo>stacking> the rest is all grayed out...can't do anything. "set as master copy" also grayed out,. Read somewhere "preferences for lightroom might be corrupt"???? I tried to do the thing in the library to correct the preferences,:(on moubntain lion 10.8.3), but in the user file there is no library...so I then looked up how to find the hidden library, but I can't find the stuff to do THAT!!! And, there IS a library on my hard drive, but when I open THAT up, there isn't anything about preferences.
I JUST bought this 2 mos ago--how can it have corrupt preferences when I only just started using it???--used it once, then discovered diddn't have right processor in old computer...bought a new computer...took several weeks to get (bought increased ram)...now I am just using for first time today. Started importing, but they are all coming up missing photoi (when I had lightroomn installed on old computer, I deleted uit and pics), then reinstalled and it was migrated over to this new computer. I looked up how to massive transfer missing photos and there is NO folder with a question mark, so I have to do hundreds and hundreds manually--can I tell you I am really hating LR4.4????? Right now I am hating photography and LR and I am beyond upset. I got back from vacation a month ago, and STILL haven't been able to process my pics!!!
Disgruntled King Tut's Mom---p.s.PLEEZ help be4 I have a nervous breakdown !!!

thanks...very strange. so first, I found a thread that said could have corrupt preferences...the short of it: caslled Apple support--he showed me how topull out the hidden "library (it wasn't that easy as it was written on a webpage here). I found LR preferences and they were corrupt--there was almost nothing in them. Followed instructions on webpage here, and redid them and it looked QUITE different!
Thwn by accident I discovered that if I click on ALL photographs, the virtual copies were there, but not in the 2013 folder specifically. don't understand that. I later closed out and restarted, and now they are everywhere they are supposed to be, so I think it was the corrupt prefderences. Also, now the mouse is working on the actual photo again......VERY odd.
However, I am afraid to download anymore pictures because of what has been happening...the question mark, then another box telling me the metadata has been changed by both LR and another application, and do I want LR to import settings from disk or overwrite disk setrtings with those from the catalog? I have no idea what this means...what does it mean, disk?. or from catalog? Does it mean there were these pics still somewhere else on my computer and LR is confused? I sure am. The drink sounds very good......
CAN ANYONE HELP??
King Tut's mom

Can not find virtual copies in Windows folder.

I can not remember to have encountered this before, so here I go: I just created a virtual copy of some photos from my summer holiday, and all works well. But when I needed to access these photos going the Windows' way (Windows/My Pictures that is), the virtual copies do not appear in my YYYYMM folder. Going back to LR though, they will appear there with a /Copy 1 extension. RIghtclicking the VC, then "Show in Explorer" will highlight the original in the folder, the VC still not being there. Part of the frustration is that I can not remember this happening before (or maybe it has), so I'm wondering if I by accident have changed any settings.
Running LR 4.1 on Windows 7 64-bit.
Thanks in advance.

Andrew Rodney wrote:
richardplondon wrote:
My only point, was an observation that there is very little actual practical difference between a virtual copy and a "master" ANYWAY.
So you have 1 master (an actual raw) and 10 VC’s. What happens to the VC’s if the master gets corrupted?
If your master has say Adobe Standard as the DNG Profile but the VC has a custom DNG profile, what happens to the VC if that profie goes missing or gets corrupted? Try it.
If by "master", you mean the Raw file on disk, then if that is corrupted (something I have never yet experienced IIRC; although I still backup against this possibility) then certainly, all images derived from that will suffer. However adding VCs does not increase the absolute risk of that. The way I was using "master", was to refer to the one LR metadata set which, unlike a VC metadata set, currently asserts a functional link to the source file. If that LR metadata set were to get corrupted, (something I have never yet experienced either IIRC, although I still backup against that possibility too) then I might be glad of a VC which I could immediately promote to that role and status instead.
Certainly bad things may happen to a VC if a required external file is lost or changed - but these are exactly the same bad things, as if the exact same events had happened for the "master" version alongside. I do take the point that there is protection in redundancy - no question - and also that instantly written-out metadata is a useful separate backup of one's work (as I mentioned, I'd be glad if VCs could get the same thing too somehow, someday).
One-to-many dependency on a single source file can make some good things happen too,though, which may be judged worth any potential added risks. Say deliberate changes are newly made to a Photoshop edit on which several LR image versions are based. These updates will ripple through all virtual versions automatically; whereas if these versions had instead been fully independent, the same changes would need to be made repeatedly to get the same result; assuming one wants all these versions to reflect the changes; which is (should be; needs to be) the realistic expectation, when one has opted to use a cluster of VCs in the first place.

Create several virtual copies at once. Looking for a workflow of exporting 650 photo's in two versions

Hello,
i have photographed a wedding and i have 650 finished photo's. All came from a 5Dm3 of 5Dm2. All are in raw. The color versions are ready. I have created a preset to convert all 650 edited version to B/W. The key is i will not edit the curve and other light and contrast sliders because, and cropping for that sense since these are all done already. So to make it more simple, i need to silver 650 photo;s in color and B/W. The color versions are done.
I am looking at three workflows:
1 create virtual copies of the 650 photo's, filter them out, apply the b/w preset/ make some small tweakes and export the B/W version
2 export the color version to a 16 bit tiff, import those and the apply the b/w preset/ make some small tweakes and export the B/W version
3 make an extra copy of the lightroom library and then apply the b/w preset/ make some small tweakes and export the B/W version
In option one i do not know how to create 650 virtual copies at once. It seems i can do this only one photo at a time which is to time consuming
In option 2 this is an extra batch and consuming me much more hard disk space
in option three this is workable but i rather stick to one library
Any help in this?
Thanks!!
Ronald

Go to the library module, grid view. Highlight all your images and create a new collection. One of the options when you create the new collection is to make new virtual copies. The collection will consist of virtual copies of all your original files. Then, just work with the collection and create your black-and-white images. The virtual copies can be exported just like the regular images. So you can export color and black-and-white versions.

Location of virtual copies on a Mac

I made virtual copies for some of my pictures in order to do different crops.
While I can see the results in Lightroom, I am unable to see the file (or the .xmp if that's the result).
They seem not to be located in the same folder. but where???
Any idea?

There are loads, see here, but they usually only read bits from the xmp data. AFAIK only LR and Bridge will read everything that LR stores in xmp, but there may be others. As it is an open format I would expect to see greater usage of it being made, as tends to happen with most Adobe developed formats, unless somebody writes a better open format, in which case Adobe adopts it and abounded its original (as has happened with PSD). In the meantime it is the only way to transfer processing data around in image files without making permanent changes to a file, so we have to live with it!

Virtual Copies search and export...

Hi,
The underscores I'm using in my filenames seems to be messing up the sort order. So I want to replace the underscores with dashes. LR can't do this in its rename utility, afaik. If I do this externally, then I need to re-associate the images in LR's database with the files on the disk. I have about 5000, so don't want to do this on a file-by-file basis. However, if I remove all the images from the LR database and re-import everything, I'll lose the virtual copies, won't I? (I can export the metadata and keywords to sidecar files, so won't lose them.)
So here's my first question: Is there a way to export the data for a virtual file to an associated sidecar file that LR can later read back in? My other thought is to convert all the virtual copies to tiff files (eat a lot space that way). Either way, I need to find all my virtual copies. So my last question is: Is there a way to search for, or filter on, just virtual copies in LR?
Thanks,
Michael

re virtual copies, the answer is No is 1.0 but Adobe understand the problem and I'm hopeful you'll see a method before long. For now, you have to do something immediately after VC creation - add to a collection, mark the IPTC instructions, or add an appropriate keyword.
The sort order shouldn't be messed up by underscores. I assume they are in a consistent position in the filename - I use yymmdd_012345 quicl description.ext. Are you sure you are sorting by filename - see the toolbar (T) in Library.
John

How to make copies/duplicates of photos in LR4 - NOT Virtual Copies

Can someone tell me if there is a SIMPLE way to make a copy or duplicate of a photo in LR4. In otherwords, you have a photo image in one folder and you want to make a copy and move it to another folder or subfolder and that copy is identical in EVERY aspect to the original photo and can be edited, manipulated, etc. without affecting the original. I can find nothing on this subject - all I keep getting is this VIRTUAL COPY which is NOT like the original and cannot be moved without the original (Master) going along with it. What's the problem? Every image program I know of can do this. BTW this in on a Mac Lion (10.8.4). Thank you, Brad

Rikk Flohr wrote:
new location - do not rename
Or same (or different) location, and do rename.
I do this regularly, but only for testing purposes. Note: Some people don't want to use virtual copies, because they are handled as "2nd class citizens" by Lightroom (e.g. not saved in xmp, and must tag along with master base copy...).
That said, I agree that care should be taken when having multiple (real) copies of same file, especially if they have the same filename (which I don't recommend, unless you really know what you are doing, and why...).
Rob

Lightroom virtual copies question

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for