# Workflow with virtual copies problem



## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how I can best set up a workflow so I can easily/automatically generate a collection of jpgs of my best pictures for use in a screensaver. The use as screensavers means that I must be able to edit these images so as to make them conform to the 16:9 ratio and I do not want to touch the originals in LR. Virtual copies are the obvious answer, but how do I set up a new (smart?) collection (let's call it "screensaver")  with only virtual copies of pictures in another collection ("favourites") when the "favourites" collection is constantly being added to. Obviously after initially editing all virtual copies in "screensaver" I would only want to edit new additions afterwards and not have to replace the whole set time and again.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 27, 2018)

Setup a Hard Drive Publish Service containing a "Screensaver" smart collection. Criteria for the published smart collection would be a) membership of the "Favourites" collection and b) Copy Name is not blank. That will pick up all existing and new VCs that you create in "Favourites", and all new and edited existing VCs would be placed in the "To be Published" area. When ready, hit the Publish button and the VCs will be exported to the hard drive folder that you specify when you first setup the Publish Service.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 27, 2018)

The combination of virtual copies and a publishing service to your disk seems the best option to me. The publishing service can use a smart collection, so that new 'favorites' are automatically added to the 'new images to publish' section. There you can edit them first (crop them) and then publish them to the folder that contains your screensaver copies.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

Thanks Jim and Johan. So I tried setting up a smart collection within the "Favourites" collection and I added a rule copy name isn't empty. But I must have done something wrong because instead of giving me the 500 something images of Favourites there are only 79 and they do not all come from the Favourites collection. I assumed making the smart collection a subset of Favourites would ensure all Favourites would be included but this is clearly not the case. So how do I set up a rule that includes all images in this collection?


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 27, 2018)

How do you define 'Favourites'? If that is a smart collection itself, then you can't use this in a second smart collection. You have to use the criteria that define a 'favourite', such as five stars or a colour label with that name. Or do you mean a folder that is marked as favourite, or a normal collection with that name?


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## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

Favourites is a collection (see above).


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 27, 2018)

You need to setup your smart collection as part of a published service, it won't work as a "subset of Favourites". Create the Published Service first, then within that create the Smart Collection (which is actually called a "Published Smart Folder"), the rules should look like the attached.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

That is very helpful, but I still can't get it to work. The Published Smart Folder remains empty. Could it be because the Favourites collection itself consists only of further collections. See screenshot (Favourites is actually the Portfolio collection)?


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 27, 2018)

Portfolio is a collection *set*. It does not contain any images by itself.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 27, 2018)

An alternative would be to give a unique keyword to all the images in that collections set, e.g. Portfolio. When you create a VC of an already keyworded image it inherits the same keywords, so you wouldn't have to remember to add the keyword when you create the VC. Then the first step of the criteria for the published smart folder would be Keywords>Contains>Portfolio.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

Ok, but "Animals", "Architecture & design", etc are collections, aren't they? When I specify those the smartfolder suddenly contains 11288 links when I set Match to "any". When I set Match to "all" I get zero entries. Neither of these are what I would expect.

As to giving them all a unique keyword ... I am somewhat reluctant to do that because I have already selected them by putting them all in a collection set.

One further consideration. If I ever get this to work using Published Smart Folder would this not mean that I basically export my images outside of LR and would then have to import them again to further edit them as jpgs. What do you mean by "edit them first" before publishing, Johan. Wouldn't that mean I am editing the original images, rather than virtual copies?


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## gYab61zH (Oct 27, 2018)

Here is a screenshot of what I tried.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 27, 2018)

That doesn't work, because now '*Copy Name isn't empty*' is one of the 'any' criteria. That means that _every_ virtual copy will fit this smart collection.

What you need to do is use '*Match: All*' of the following rules, and then as first line use *Copy Name isn't empty*. Then hold down the Alt-key while clicking on the plus icon behind this rule. That will make it change to a # icon and now you get a second line where you can set a series of rules with 'any'. This sounds complicated, but the screenshot will make it clear.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 28, 2018)

Thanks Johan, not complicated but the results are still not what I would expect (see screenshots). As suggested earlier I made the smart folder part of the Hard Drive Publish Service but I only get 20 hits and not all of those are in Portfolio collection set.







. 

By the way, I did Google this but the sites I encountered do not go much beyond stating that smart collections are very useful but offer few if any details.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 28, 2018)

gYab61zH said:


> One further consideration. If I ever get this to work using Published Smart Folder would this not mean that I basically export my images outside of LR and would then have to import them again to further edit them as jpgs. What do you mean by "edit them first" before publishing, Johan. Wouldn't that mean I am editing the original images, rather than virtual copies?



We mean that you edit an original to the point that you are happy with it and now want to use it as a screensaver. At *that* point you create the VC, and the only action required on the VC is to crop to the required aspect ratio. Certainly no need to reimport for further editing. When we get the Published Smart Folder working correctly, you can do that cropping either in the original collection or the Published Smart Folder.

If subsequently you decide to do further non-crop edits of the original you'd need to either sync the changes to the corresponding VC or delete the VC and create a new one, crop it and re-publish. That's just the way it works if you want to use images as screensavers and the aspect ratio of the monitor is different to the aspect ratio of the camera.


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 28, 2018)

gYab61zH said:


> View attachment 11693.
> 
> By the way, I did Google this but the sites I encountered do not go much beyond stating that smart collections are very useful but offer few if any details.



If you select the Portfolio collection and use the library filter to filter for VCs, how many are there?


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 28, 2018)

gYab61zH said:


> Thanks Johan, not complicated but the results are still not what I would expect (see screenshots). As suggested earlier I made the smart folder part of the Hard Drive Publish Service but I only get 20 hits and not all of those are in Portfolio collection set.
> View attachment 11692
> 
> 
> ...



The smart collection I showed you will only contain virtual copies _that reside in those four collections_. I don’t know how many VC’s fit that criterium, so I don’t know if those 20 results are wrong. You have to remember that the virtual copies themselves need to be in those collections! If you have a certain photo in one of those collections, and you create a virtual copy of that photo while you are somewhere else (their folder, for example), then this smart collection will not pick up that new virtual copy. You need to add the VC to the collection too.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 28, 2018)

Ok, I had not realised that VCs had to be in the same collection. Now it does work as expected and I can publish them to a folder that is synced to all my computers. Thank you both for introducing me to the basics of smart collections and publishing. I do have a few follow up questions though, if I may:

1. What part of your smartfolder setup identifies the VCs? Is it "Copy name"? If so, why isn't it called Virtual Copy name" to make the connection clear?

2. Is there any way I can automate this setup further? Ideally I would like the VCs to be dynamically generated so that if I work on the original the changes are immediately reflected in the VCs as well. Unless I am missing something the present setup is not that different in terms of actions to be taken by me from say creating a set of VCs, selecting them, editing them, and exporting them to the relevant folder as jpgs.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 28, 2018)

gYab61zH said:


> 1. What part of your smartfolder setup identifies the VCs? Is it "Copy name"? If so, why isn't it called Virtual Copy name" to make the connection clear?


Yes. There is no option to search on virtual copies, so you have to do it this way. It is called 'Copy Name' because that is the name of the field. It is not strictly a _virtual_ copy name. You can also give a copy name to a real image, not only to a virtual copy. In practise people don't usually do this, so checking that this field isn't empty is normally a good way of identifying a virtual copy.



gYab61zH said:


> 2. Is there any way I can automate this setup further? Ideally I would like the VCs to be dynamically generated so that if I work on the original the changes are immediately reflected in the VCs as well. Unless I am missing something the present setup is not that different in terms of actions to be taken by me from say creating a set of VCs, selecting them, editing them, and exporting them to the relevant folder as jpgs.


As Jim already explained, that is not the way to do this. The way to do this is by editing the original. Only when you are ready with that, you create a virtual copy and the only extra edit on that virtual copy is the cropping to screen dimensions. If you didn't need to crop, then you wouldn't have to use virtual copies at all.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 28, 2018)

Johan, as I learn more techniques and gain greater (one hopes) photographic insight into what makes an image successful or not, so I want to tinker more with what I consider my best pictures. Some will be added, others will loose this status altogether and many others will be tinkered with as I go along, so the editing process never stops and therefore I have a real need for VCs to be dynamically updated. I do realise that in other contexts this is not normally needed (e.g. when using VCs to generate b&w versions, playing around with different crop aspect ratios and the like).

All my editing work is always done on the originals (except in the cases just mentioned)  and naturally I would only use the VC to crop to 16:9 (that is what I meant by "editing them"), so what I was saying is that in terms of ease of workflow there is little to choose between the Publish Services workflow or the alternative of creating a set of VCs, selecting them, cropping them, and exporting them to the relevant folder as jpgs.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 28, 2018)

gYab61zH said:


> I have a real need for VCs to be dynamically updated.


VC don't do that, period. A virtual copy is like a real copy. It is treated as a separate image and so it is not dynamically updated.



gYab61zH said:


> so what I was saying is that in terms of ease of workflow there is little to choose between the Publish Services workflow or the alternative of creating a set of VCs, selecting them, cropping them, and exporting them to the relevant folder as jpgs.


The difference between a publishing service to your hard disk and exporting to your hard disk is indeed not very large. The main difference is that Lightroom keeps track of what happens, so when you decide to edit a published image, that published image will automatically be moved to the 'republish' section. When you export images, you have to remember yourself that you need to export them again after you've made some further edits.

To make life a little easier, why not do it in the following way: Because you would create these virtual copies specificly to make desktop pictures, why not change the copy name to something like 'Desktop Picture'. In that case your smart publishing service folder would only need to contain one single line; *Copy Name is 'Desktop Picture'*. It would now also not matter where you are when you create the virtual copy and you would not have to add the VC to the portfolio collections. As soon as you've changed the copy name to 'Desktop Picture', that VC will appear in your publishing service.


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## gYab61zH (Oct 28, 2018)

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I'll give that a try and see whether it works for me. As to the VC dynamically updating, I was not trying to suggest this is part of their functionality in LR, I was just hoping there might be a routine in LR that would generate new VCs when the original image is changed (a kind of "if--then" construct). Thanks again to both.


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