Remember how I showed you the power of snapshots in Adobe Lightroom Classic? Well, sometimes you need to produce multiple versions of the same image, whether it’s to have two different styles to your photos, use in third-party plugins or otherwise.
To do this, simply right-click on an image in your Lightroom catalog, and click “Create Virtual Copy” (or go to the Photo menu > Create Virtual Copy). This will create a “copy” of the master image. You can put these into stacks for better organization, or keep them separate. While it’s technically the same file, it’s treated like a separate image, meaning you can save versions of your photos to your heart’s content!
My understanding is that a virtual copy isn’t an actual copy. The second image is just metadata code of the original and resides in the Lightroom catalog. You run risk of losing them if catalog is ever corrupted. You can however export it, thus creating a second version.
You’re right Joe! Thanks for clarifying. I’ll update this to reflect that.
If you write data to XMP, you can create a snapshot of each VC and it will be saved in the XMP of the base image. When you reimport the original image with that sidecar file is there, you’ll find the snapshots which reflect your VC to re-enable them.
Interesting — I hadn’t even thought of that. Nice tip!
My understanding is that a virtual copy isn’t an actual copy. The second image is just metadata code of the original and resides in the Lightroom catalog. You run risk of losing them if catalog is ever corrupted. You can however export it, thus creating a second version.
If you write data to XMP, you can create a snapshot of each VC and it will be saved in the XMP of the base image. When you reimport the original image with that sidecar file is there, you’ll find the snapshots which reflect your VC to re-enable them.