Workflow: Lightroom 2 - Virtual Copies & RAW Original

Tom Potter

Hey Guys,

I use Lightroom 2. I am trying to get some clarification regarding how I should best proceed with my Workflow.

I use SmugVault. I'm thinking the first thing I want to do is to make a virtual copy & then upload my RAW original to my SMug Vault.
I would then make whatever development adjustments to my virtual copy, and then upload that processed copy to my gallery, so that prints can be ordered off of it. I know you can make a virtual copy, make adjustments on it, and then, "Set Copy As Master". However, I'm not quite understanding the benefit of that over what I described above.

Am I missing something here? Suggestions on how to better approach it?


Thanks a lot......Tom

brianb

It depends on exactly what you want to happen when you upload the raw file. Do you want to include all the processing settings you made for the virtual copies to be included? This is how I understand it, and what I do.

Virtual copies in LR exist only in the catalog, the only way to get them out is via an export. Develop module changes normally exist only in LR's catalog. However, if you make a new snapshot (in Develop module), LR will save/write the settings into the metadata for the raw file (depending on if you have it set up to do so).

What I do is process the raw file (DNG in my case, and I save everything back into the file), including creating as many virtual copies as desired. Then for each finished virtual copy (including the master), I create a snapshot. After that, the DNG (or raw+xmp) file contains all the info so if you lost your catalog, you could re-import the file, and while you wouldn't have the virtual copies, you could create as many virtual copies as needed and set each one to a specific snapshot. You should be able to test it by creating a new catalog and import some images to verify that all the VC snapshots are there.

In your case, I would wait to upload the raw file until after doing what I described above, that way you would still have your processing saved in the file itself.


Brian

Tom Potter

brianb wrote: »

It depends on exactly what you want to happen when you upload the raw file. Do you want to include all the processing settings you made for the virtual copies to be included? This is how I understand it, and what I do.

Virtual copies in LR exist only in the catalog, the only way to get them out is via an export. Develop module changes normally exist only in LR's catalog. However, if you make a new snapshot (in Develop module), LR will save/write the settings into the metadata for the raw file (depending on if you have it set up to do so).

What I do is process the raw file (DNG in my case, and I save everything back into the file), including creating as many virtual copies as desired. Then for each finished virtual copy (including the master), I create a snapshot. After that, the DNG (or raw+xmp) file contains all the info so if you lost your catalog, you could re-import the file, and while you wouldn't have the virtual copies, you could create as many virtual copies as needed and set each one to a specific snapshot. You should be able to test it by creating a new catalog and import some images to verify that all the VC snapshots are there.

In your case, I would wait to upload the raw file until after doing what I described above, that way you would still have your processing saved in the file itself.

Brian

Hey Brian,

I really appreciate the detail you went into. I sort of follow what you're saying. However, you have a better grasp of LR than I do. I DO understand how changes we make to an image in LR are a seperate set of instructions that are applied to our image, rather than actually have changed the image itself (if I stated that correctly). However, I am not at all familiar with using "SnapShot". When I get some time, I will need to carefully study your reply and do some research on it, so that I can fully understand what you're saying. In the meantime, would it be possible for you to explain simply, so that even a tiny brain like mine might be able to grasp how the Snapshot tool works?

Part of what I hear you saying, aside from the Snapshot issue, is that I can upload my RAW image after having made changes to it??? If I have that correct, I'm confused by it, 'cause I always thought you'd want to make changes only to your Virtual Copies.

Thanks Again Brian....Appreciate your patience.

Tom

pathfinder

Hitting ctrl-' ( or Apple-' for Mac ) creates an instant Virtual copy of your file, and you could literally do that at each step as you edit a file ( not that you would want to ), but these are actually what they are called - VIRTUAL COPIES - just a recording in the catalog to provide a second "copy" of your original file which remains completely unchanged. You can make a virtual copy anywhere in your editing stream of commands, from the original RAW files to a finished jpg. This will let you compare two editing approaches on your original file, without making any alteration to your original file.

brianb

Tom,

Here's a short post that explains what a snapshot is:

http://lightroomkillertips.com/2009/whats-a-lightroom-snapshot/


For the other more general raw question, many people advocate keeping backup copies of the original, untouched raw files. If you want, you can make as many adjustments in LR as you want, and have it keep all changes, history, etc. within its catalog, and the raw file can remain untouched. However, that means if anything happens to your LR catalog, all the develop adjustments are gone (you need to backup the catalog as well, which smugvault isn't ideally suited for).

Personally, I would rather have the settings for each photo saved into the file itself (in addition to the catalog), that way by backing up the raw files I also have a backup of those adjustments. I think that is in the catalog settings, as "Automatically write changes into XMP". If you don't want to have that enabled, there is also a way to save the metadata on command, I believe its either control-S or command-S depending on Windows or Mac. Note that if you're using the original raw file (NEF or CR2 for example), I believe all the metadata is written out into a sidecar file (.xmp) that would need to be backed up as well. If you convert the raw files to DNG, the metadata is written into the file itself, with no sidecar file. There are advantages to each approach (changes occur in a small text file versus the entire raw file, vs convenience of only having to deal with 1 file vs 2).

So I guess you need to determine what you want to keep in smugvault:

• raw file with no development adjustments
• raw file with adjustments (which includes no adjustments, since they're just metadata and you can undo them in LR)

The first option is easy, just upload the raw file. For the second, if you have sidecar files with all the settings, you could always upload the raw file right away, and then add the sidecar after you've processed the image (or add/replace a DNG file, or keep original raw, and add DNG with adjustments, at the expense of bigger file to upload and store).

Oh, one other thing, I believe (but may be wrong) that everything I've said regarding saving metadata (in catalog vs file/sidecar) applies for all the metadata, such as keywords, captions, IPTC, etc; as well as any develop settings.


Hopefully that made some sense, if you have more questions feel free to ask, I'll answer as best I can or point you in the right direction.

Brian

arodney

Virtual copies are partial XMP metadata representing the “original” and are only understood by Lightroom. That means, without LR and the original raw file, the VC is not at all useful. And should LR update its processing engine, as we saw from LR 2 to LR3, the VC would again be pretty useless without the original raw.

If you save out a VC as a DNG, you get everything in that container (the raw data, the current instructions the VC XMP describes etc). Obviously this is a big file but then the idea I believe is you wish to backup to a cloud, the stuff necessary to eventually render the data to something you can use (a TIFF). Any software that can process the DNG would have access to the raw but not necessarily the XMP that defines its current rendering. That’s all proprietary for each converter. There is also a embedded JPEG in the DNG of which you can control the size. If you update this prior to sending it to the cloud, that JPEG could be extracted and used, another nice backup.

A VC without the original raw data can’t do squat I’m afraid.

Tom Potter

arodney wrote: »

Virtual copies are partial XMP metadata representing the “original” and are only understood by Lightroom. That means, without LR and the original raw file, the VC is not at all useful. And should LR update its processing engine, as we saw from LR 2 to LR3, the VC would again be pretty useless without the original raw.

If you save out a VC as a DNG, you get everything in that container (the raw data, the current instructions the VC XMP describes etc). Obviously this is a big file but then the idea I believe is you wish to backup to a cloud, the stuff necessary to eventually render the data to something you can use (a TIFF). Any software that can process the DNG would have access to the raw but not necessarily the XMP that defines its current rendering. That’s all proprietary for each converter. There is also a embedded JPEG in the DNG of which you can control the size. If you update this prior to sending it to the cloud, that JPEG could be extracted and used, another nice backup.

A VC without the original raw data can’t do squat I’m afraid.

Hey All,

I greatly appreciate all the detail you folks have laid out. However, is it possible to have someone explain this in plain English? Sorry, but, I'm just not QUITE getting all this. I certainly appreciate the point that I could have my RAW file backed up, but, without the changes I made to it, it's ki nd of worthless. So, How do I go about saving my original, untouched RAW, along with the part of the file that contains the changes I made? As you can see, I did not refer to this by namew, 'cause I'm not sure what it's called. However, I believe it's the Catalog I wopuld need to back up as well?


Thx, Tom

brianb

The LR catalog is a database of everything LR knows about (it's the file with extension .lrcat). A catalog includes links/pointers to your photos. Any and all changes you make to a photo, as well things such as collections, virtual copies, etc, are stored in the catalog. There are a couple ways to get LR to save the individual photo adjustments outside of the catalog and either into the image itself or into an accompanying .xmp file. The easiest way is to enable the setting in the catalog preferences to automatically write the changes. Once that has been done the raw file (or the raw file plus the xmp file) can be backed up and the develop setting retained.

The whole deal about snapshots and virtual copies is because VCs exist only in the catalog, in order to be able to associated the develop settings for a VC back to the original raw (so that they can be saved outside the catalog), a snapshot of the VC can be made. That original raw file will have whatever settings are applied to it, as well as the VC settings (just saved under a snapshot).

In the event that you lose your catalog, but have photos with the saved settings backed up, what you'd have to do is create a new catalog, import the photos, and after they're imported, the develop settings from before should still be there. Thing such as collections, VC will be gone, because they exist only in the catalog (which can be quite large, hundreds of MB or several GB). You can test this out by creating a new test catalog, and save the settings from your main catalog for a few photos, then import them into the new catalog. After the test, you can delete the test catalog.

If you are converting your photos to DNG, you would not have any sidecar xmp files, if you're not, you would have them as well.

Since LR applies all of its changes nondestructively (it doesn't modify the original image), a raw file with the saved changes includes the original (some people save the original, straight from the camera raw as another separate copy as well, but I consider that overkill).

In your case, I would have LR set to automatically save the metadata into the files, modify them, and then backup the photos (do the test catalog as well to make sure its working). Personally, I have a script that copies my LR catalog and photos onto another hard drive, and I also backup to another external hard drive as well (brought home every week or two from safe deposit box). Whatever works best for you, you want something that will be easy to do so you actually do it. The best backup solution is worthless if you don't use it!

Hope that helps,

Brian