# Making my changes permanent



## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 26, 2017)

I love LR's database and use tags and face recognition and have invested time in getting these right. I have also folder by folder made all the edits I want to. I'm now in a position where my historical photo library is complete. 

I would now like to make all my changes permanent to the original files so that I can use these externally to lightroom without having to worry whether or not I've exported them. 

I can no doubt work out how to do this. The question I have is if I now delete the originals from LR and reimport the permanently changed files, will all the tag data be reimported correctly into the database such that searches on tags or faces will work?  

I am an amateur and a beginner to LR.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 26, 2017)

Sorry, you cannot do that. Lightroom stores its edits in the database (catalog), it does not write changes into the pixels of the images. Even not if you want it to. You will have to export the images to get a version where the edits are 'baked into the pixels'.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 26, 2017)

Of course you could delete the originals after exporting, and then import the exported versions again, but I'm not sure that is a good idea.


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## Gnits (Jan 26, 2017)

You should read this article .... Lightroom Catalogs - Top 10 Misunderstandings | The Lightroom Queen



Cheshire4Dave said:


> I would now like to make all my changes permanent to the original files



As Johan said .... this cannot be done.

What you can do is to export your images ......
1. In a format of your choice (you have to decide ..jpg, tiff, psd, etc)
2. Bit Depth (8,16,32 depending on format).
3. Colour Space setting (srgb,Adobrgb,ProphotoRGB)
4. Optional is pixel dimensions, but I assume you want to keep all your pixels.

Why should you bother to do that now and discover later you need a different combination of 1-4.

At any stage you can generated an exported version with the specs needed at the time (eg small srgb jpg  for web or 16 bit AdobeRGB Tiff for a fine art print).

You just need to manage (and backup) the Lr catalog and your original images.


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## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 26, 2017)

Thanks to you both. If I've exported in the quality I want, delete the original and then re-import will all my tags be re-imported and stored in the database? Otherwise I would have to go through retagging and face reco again and would lose the benefits (to me) of LR.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 26, 2017)

It definitely saves the names as keywords. If I remember correctly, export as original does keep the face location whereas write metadata to files doesn't... but do test that before you go ahead.

Either way, you would lose a fair chunk of information - flags, collection membership, virtual copies, and various other minor bits that aren't written to the files.


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## Gnits (Jan 26, 2017)

Are you trying to save space ? If you save as jpg you will have smaller files but you are losing data, if saved as 16 bit tiffs you will consume more space.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 26, 2017)

Cheshire4Dave said:


> ... *and would lose the benefits (to me) of LR*.


Hi Dave, and welcome!

Your plan, as explained, completely destroys the whole point of using Lightroom.
Trying to destroy original files and replace them with the processed derivatives is a really bad idea.

It is a bit like going to the hardware store and buying the most expensive power drill on offer and then proceeding to smash it up because one is trying to use it as a hammer instead of a power drill.

Lightroom is designed, philosophically and practically, to retain and preserve the original files in their original state on the basis that this is the highest quality file. (And they are - the potential need for editing notwithstanding!)
There are extensive options for creating derivative files from the original (processed or unprocessed) as and when they are required.
It is not required and generally discouraged to re-import these derivatives because there really is no point - one can always create a derivative from the original at any time and the derivative has nothing that it can offer over and above the original (along with edits and metadata).

I fully understand that you are an acknowledged newbie and are still trying to find your way in the world of Lightroom, parametric editing, and digital asset management.
On this basis I make an earnest plea to you to become much more informed about Lightroom and the advantages of the paradigm in which it operates.
This forum is oozing, dripping, with expertise in these matters and we would be very happy to guide you through the issues.

As things stand, I feel, to go through with your plan would be a self-inflicted tragedy.
(I apologise for the forthright choice of language and simile and perhaps a touch of hyperbole but if it gets your attention then I have succeeded.)

Tony Jay


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## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 27, 2017)

Thank you Tony for your forthrightness. I'm trying to get to grips with Lightroom using Victoria's book (which is very good). I appreciate what you say about the original being the highest quality image, which with photos taken by digital cameras is obviously true. My question is not about this or saving space. 

My reason for asking this question is because I'm digitising my entire photo collection by scanning in a large number of photos from 1954 to 2002 taken with a number of different cameras. I'm cropping, straightening, changing colour, contrast & light using LR Auto features as a starting point and then finer tuning if needed. I must say LR does a fantastic job. I then use face reco and add keywords. What I end up with is what I consider, the finished article and is what I would like to make permanent. I have no intention to do this to my digital photos from 2002 onwards. 

Is what I'm asking a really bad idea as you suggest now I've explained what I'm hoping to achieve more clearly? Apologies for not doing this before.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 27, 2017)

Although Lightroom does not yet have feature for designating an image as "final" - i.e. not for further editing - there is nothing to stop you assigning a colour label or even a keyword to indicate that fact.
(A strong suggestion has, in fact, been made to Adobe to implement such a feature!)
The edits you have made can be permanent - just don't edit those image  any further!
If you need help recognizing which images are which in this regard then implement a system similar to that described in my opening sentence of this post.
You can even assign which images either need editing or which don't to Smart collections based on the presence or absence of the criteria mentioned above to make things even easier.

It really doesn't change things that the source of the images in question happens to be a scanner and not a digital camera!

Tony Jay


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## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 27, 2017)

Here's where we disagree. 99% of my scanned images need serious editing but few of my digital images do. 

Once I've finalised my editing and cataloging of the scanned images, I'll never go back to them, hence wanting to make them permanent. They are now much better than the original photo. 

Making the changes permanent will speed up my downstream processes of making albums etc. outside of LR. 

Whilst these permanently changed images are still not of the quality of my digital images, I would like to use them as my "starting point" or "original" in LR so that I can have the best of both worlds of digital asset management within LR and outside it in the world of Windows applications.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 27, 2017)

If you go ahead with your plan the day will come when you regret this course of action.
The logic about whether an image needs serious editing or not is flawed as is the logic about making albums etc.

I cannot make you do or not do anything but I can only repeat my advice to learn about how Lightroom really works before making any irretrievable steps because to me you seem stuck in a mindset that does not fit with Lightroom best practice or digital asset management best practice more generally.

Tony Jay


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## Gnits (Jan 27, 2017)

Some arguments against your approach is that :

Software for editing images is getting better all the time.
Your own skill set improves over time.
Your needs downstream may change.

You can easily create a set of current "post processed masters" by exporting the images into a folder (or sub folder)  of your choice and having them remain within Lr.  All future work can be done with these masters.  You are losing a small amount of disk space.


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## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 27, 2017)

Thank you Tony for your continuing forthrightness.  Having been an engineer for 40 years (now retired), I fully understand flawed logic and the importance of having an open mind and so hopefully, with you being a guru, I may be able to convince you of my case.

This is all about digitising a photo collection from prints NOT ongoing digital images.  I will study and learn about Lightroom in due course.  I have a good quality Canon scanner which has done its best with my 2,000 fairly poor, some faded, photo prints.  I can scan about 4 prints at a time, so this process has taken a while.  My objective is to streamline the editing process and manage the photos within a database environment - hence buying Lr.

You say .........

*Lightroom is designed, philosophically and practically, to retain and preserve the original files in their original state on the basis that this is the highest quality file.*

Here's where I believe you're wrong in that my original file is what the scanner produced.  Having edited my scanned images with Lightroom, these images are now *the *highest quality ones which I want to become my base files.

I've run some controlled tests to determine

after editing and tagging whether the exported image is identical to Lr's image (with its updates held in the database)
whether the exported image can be reimported and edited successfully
whether this approach breaks the design, philosophy and practicality of Lightroom

Also as part of this, to develop my workflow for digitising my large photo print collection

My process

import the scanned images into Lightroom
add tags
edit, crop, straighten in the Develop module
run the face reco
export to a new folder
reimport into Lightroom into a new folder
attempt to edit the newly imported images

Results

The original image viewed in LR looks identical to the exported one
All the tags in the test have persisted across import/export/reimport
The newly imported image is fully editable as far as I can see

The resultant exported image on disk is considerably better than the base original from the scanner

The image on disk can now be directly inserted into MS word to create documents and albums
I now have the highest quality images I can produce (given the raw materials) in both Lightroom and on disk
I honestly can't see a downside and am in the process of writing up my workflow (which Victoria champions in her book).  For me this is a one-off exercise for my scanned photos.

What am I missing?

Thanks - Dave


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 27, 2017)

What you are missing here is that it's a free world.  If this is how you want to setup your workflow, then by all means do so! You seem to know what you're doing, why you are doing it and it works for you. So why do you seek approval from any of us?


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## RikkFlohr (Jan 27, 2017)

When an image is "Final", simply create a Snapshot called Final. As long as you don't deliberately (and it is a very deliberate act-not performed easily by accidental) update the "Final" snapshot, you will always have a final version available with a single mouse click.  Not only this, you can have multiple Finals - all savable to XMP, sharable via DNG and not requiring the construct of the Lightroom catalog to execute.


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## tspear (Jan 27, 2017)

Dave,

For now, my post processing editing skill involves the use of masking filters (gradient, radial, brush...), global adjustments (exposure, contrast) and in very limited measures hue, color temp. Where I do not have the skill yet is for color tone curves. I "finished" many images from years ago, as I have increased my skills I have periodically gone back and re-edited some of the images to make them "better", in fact I have sometimes undone previous work as I can do it better now. 
With digital images, regardless of the original image data (CMOS chips, processed JPEG, Scanned TIFF), many of the formats "lose" information with each conversion. Therefore, if I had exported, deleted in Lr, and re-imported I would have lost the ability to go back to the original image as my skills improved.

With the size and ever expanding capabilities of Lr, I tend to doubt I will ever "catch" up and truly say an image is final and I will never touch it again.

Lastly, Lr has a great feature called publish. This allows Lr to maintain an exported "copy" of the "final" rendition of the images. If you ever "improve" the images again, you can just click update and Lr will update in place all the exported images.

Good luck,


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## Gnits (Jan 27, 2017)

RikkFlohr said:


> When an image is "Final", simply create a Snapshot called Final.



Great idea.  

Also .... this request to Adobe ... 
Lightroom: Mark a photo as the FINAL version | Photoshop Family Customer Community

One drawback is that you can search / select by "Snapshot Status" but you cannot Search / Select images with, say, a Snapshot name of "Final".
The same restriction applies to Smart Collections, but maybe there is a clever way around this.

It is still a useful technique as you can at least easily revert to your version of the Final settings for your image.

My advice to  Cheshire4Dave .
a. Some suggestions posted ..... you can consider  ..... 
b. Wait a few months before deleting the original scans.

Ultimately, you know what you want to do and understand better than anyone your own priorities.


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## Cheshire4Dave (Jan 27, 2017)

Thanks to all for your time and suggestions.  I'll do some more research and develop my workflow hopefully avoiding doing anything I'll regret further down the line. 

Back to studying the Missing FAQ book!

Dave


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## PhilBurton (Jan 27, 2017)

Cheshire4Dave said:


> Thanks to all for your time and suggestions.  I'll do some more research and develop my workflow hopefully avoiding doing anything I'll regret further down the line.
> 
> Back to studying the Missing FAQ book!
> 
> Dave


Dave,

Disk storage is cheap these days, the non-SSD type.  I can buy a 4 TB Hitachi Deskstar drive from www.newegg.com for about US $140 these days.  Use Lightroom to copy your "final" images to a separate set of folders. But please don't discard your originals.  As many people have pointed out, your needs may change in the future.  Or perhaps your heirs' needs.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 27, 2017)

This is no doubt complete heresy, but in Dave's defense, I understand his decision. I've spent the last couple of years photographing all our old family snapshots... and then I converted them all to lossy DNG's instead of retaining the original raw files. I'm not throwing away the negatives, and if I needed a perfectly high quality scan, I'd scan that particular picture properly again. These copies don't have to be perfect - they're just better than the boxes of albums in the loft because we can actually see these.

This, in my mind, is different to throwing away original digital images because in this scenario, the negatives are my originals - not the initial scans.


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## tspear (Jan 27, 2017)

Victoria,

Ah, but those originals fade. I was actually looking at some pictures from 2004 with my daughter last night and some have degraded rather sharply.


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## PhilBurton (Jan 27, 2017)

Victoria Bampton said:


> This is no doubt complete heresy, but in Dave's defense, I understand his decision. I've spent the last couple of years photographing all our old family snapshots... and then I converted them all to lossy DNG's instead of retaining the original raw files. I'm not throwing away the negatives, and if I needed a perfectly high quality scan, I'd scan that particular picture properly again. These copies don't have to be perfect - they're just better than the boxes of albums in the loft because we can actually see these.
> 
> This, in my mind, is different to throwing away original digital images because in this scenario, the negatives are my originals - not the initial scans.


Virginia,

That approach works, until it doesn't.  Negatives can fade over time, especially color, which has happened to my 40+ year old Kodacolor negatives.  Also negatives can be damaged by mis-handling or even lost due to calamity.  

Digitization can preserve the negative at its current level of quality.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 27, 2017)

"Highest quality" does not mean "finished product".
As soon as you create a derivative file from your edited scan data is lost in the translation.
Making an 8-bit JPEG - massive data loss.
Making a 16.bit TIFF - much less but still data loss and loss of future editing flexibility.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 28, 2017)

PhilBurton said:


> Negatives can fade over time, especially color, which has happened to my 40+ year old Kodacolor negatives.  Also negatives can be damaged by mis-handling or even lost due to calamity.



Of course. But these are snapshots that have been sat in the loft for years, never seeing the light of day. If they haven't been missed for that long, the minor differences between a full mosaic raw and a JPEG compressed lossy DNG is peanuts.


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## Fredosaurus (Dec 30, 2017)

It's been an interesting exchange here.   Despite best practice being to preserve the original, I'm very much in favor of an *option* to have edits applied (destructively), but preserving other catalog information.  "Best practice" should be used in most cases, but not when there is a good reason not too.   As a semi-beginner non-professional I do use Lightroom non-destructively but sometimes use Photoshop destructively.


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## Johan Elzenga (Dec 30, 2017)

This is a discussion that has been going on for a bit on photoshop feedback forums, so perhaps you should have a look there: Lightroom #1 suggestion: please let us make "destructive" changes to our images | Photoshop Family Customer Community. There are lots of reasons why this would be a very bad idea, and for raw files it is technically even impossible.


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## clee01l (Dec 31, 2017)

Sometimes it is in the best interest of all to protect the stupid from themselves.    Any time you write over the original, that original is irretreivably lost. If you have ever pressed the wrong key or later exclaimed "Oops!" you can get a grasp of what irretreivably lost means.  The worst example is the JPEG.  Which is a lossy format. Even the 1st generation JPEG from the camera never returns all of the pixels contained in the original file before it was saved.  If you overwrite the lossy original with a new derivative file it loses even more pixels and further edits and saves destroy even more pixels resulting in eventually an unusable image file.   As a semi-beginner, you simply have not gained enough photo file knowledge to see what a bad decision it would be to write over the original.

I have JPEGs that were taken 20 years ago and processed using a destructive editor.  They are not much good to me today since the processing was so rank amateur and the processing app so technically abysmal that my faded memory of the event has more use to me that any image retained.


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## cyrc (Aug 6, 2018)

Cheshire4Dave said:


> Thanks to all for your time and suggestions.  I'll do some more research and develop my workflow hopefully avoiding doing anything I'll regret further down the line.
> 
> Back to studying the Missing FAQ book!
> 
> Dave


Did you ever settle on how to accomplish your goals? I am doing the same kind of  thing -scanning old photos going back over 80 years, the bulk of which are in horrible shape, and trying to make them better. I am also tagging people and changing capture dates to match when I believe  the photo was taken as opposed to the time of the scan. It is a lot of work and I want these changes to be permanent, especially the new capture date.  It is too easy to revert the capture date to the date of the scan because the revert and the edit commands are right next to each other on the menu list. I mistakenly reverted dates an entire folders and lost weeks worth of dating  where I had pored over the details of each photo one by one to settle on a best guess as to the time it was taken.


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## MarkNicholas (Aug 7, 2018)

It has been so long since I made the transition from photoshop to lightroom that my memory of how strange a concept lightroom was is now a distant memory. One of those strange concepts was the fact that you didn't open a photo file, edit it and then save it. In lightroom you imported it into a catalogue, edited it and that was it, you didn't save anything and so it did feel incomplete at first. Also in those early days in lightroom because of unfamiliarity there was much greater scope for disasters such as having thousands of photos selected and applying edits to what you thought was 1 photo ! If you caught it before closing lightroom then Ctrl + Z was there to save the day but if you didn't then ........

Now after may years of using lightroom it is of course second nature and doesn't feel strange at all. When I have done with editing etc. I feel as if those edits are permanent, even though of course I can further edit and change. However, if you really want a permanent version you can always export to create a new file in whatever format you like.

In my view having a feature that makes edits "permanent" would defeat one of the fundamental principles of lightroom. In any case, due to the nature of lightroom such a feature would have to be unlockable thereby rendering it not permanent.


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## Jimmsp (Aug 7, 2018)

Having moved to shooting only Raw a number  (>15) of years ago, I have come to appreciate many of the arguments discussed above. 
But I have also come to learn that little in photography is ever "permanent", except perhaps the raw negative.
I have grown as a photographer over the years, Lightroom has grown as a processing package over the same time frame, and what I think of as "good processing" has changed a bit as well.
I sometimes go back a few years and relook at a photo I once had given a 5* rating to -  meaning one of my best.
I resurrect the Raw - unchanged -  make a virtual copy, and reprocess it. Most of the time when I am done, it looks different than what I had first did.
Sometimes the changes are small, other times not.
Is this bad?  No.  But if I had tossed the Raw negative, I would be missing something important.
I have a few scans of both prints and of negatives. Again, the same. I can go back to the original scans, call them my Raw, and reprocess. 
Once again, I am happy to have the original, and to be able to compare my version 1 with a version 2 done a few years later.
Some of these new processed photos also include (destructive) enhancements in Photoshop.  But keeping the original unchanged Raw is vital to me.
Good luck in your journey.


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## PhilBurton (Aug 7, 2018)

cyrc said:


> Did you ever settle on how to accomplish your goals? I am doing the same kind of  thing -scanning old photos going back over 80 years, the bulk of which are in horrible shape, and trying to make them better. I am also tagging people and changing capture dates to match when I believe  the photo was taken as opposed to the time of the scan. It is a lot of work and I want these changes to be permanent, especially the new capture date.  It is too easy to revert the capture date to the date of the scan because the revert and the edit commands are right next to each other on the menu list. I mistakenly reverted dates an entire folders and lost weeks worth of dating  where I had pored over the details of each photo one by one to settle on a best guess as to the time it was taken.


cyrc (and Cheshire4Dave)

How do you handle the situation where only the year of the photo is known?  Or maybe only a range of years?

Phil Burton


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## Roelof Moorlag (Aug 8, 2018)

PhilBurton said:


> How do you handle the situation where only the year of the photo is known? Or maybe only a range of years?


Group them in collections or hierachical keywords per year or decade.

About scanning legacy work Peter Krogh wrote a very informative book. All 'problems' mentioned in this forum topic are covered in it.
Digitize Your Photos with Your Camera and Lightroom


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## gwwinaz (Jul 18, 2020)

Hi, this is an old discussion but since I'm new to Lightroom this is new information for me. I fully understand the Lightroom philosophy of keeping revisions in a database and not changing the original. The problem is, Lightroom isn't the only tool I use and once an image is improved future changes are extremely rare. For example, I have other software I find much better for making movies that include pictures as well as making "ordinary" slide shows. These tools reference by folder structure.

I'm also in the group that is improving scans of slides. I've found many of my slide scans need additional exposure and sometimes additional tweaking (scans were made years ago). Once that is done, along with adding keywords, I doubt I'll ever go back to any of the 5,000+ images, all JPEGs, for revisions.

Unfortunately, for any pictures I edit, be it a scan of a slide or a picture taken today, it seems I have to keep the version in Lightroom and an exported version for other applications referencing images by folder structure. Luckily disc storage is now relatively cheap since I also keep multiple backup copies of all of these files. A simple, "Update With Changes" feature would be very helpful and eliminate a tremendous amount of overhead for those using non-Adobe tools to access individual pictures.

On the very positive side for Lightroom, exporting a smart collection provides amazing capability for digital picture frames and sharing selected images. These are exported into a Lightroom Temp Exports folder, Dropbox etc., or directly to USB. If the images are needed for an external program then an appropriately named collection is exported to a Lightroom Exports folder structure (and may need to be exported again if there are future edits).

If I'm missing an easy way to include the lightroom edited images by file reference when using non-Adobe tools, please let me know your technique.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jul 19, 2020)

Have a look at how Publishing Services in Lightroom work. A publishing service to your hard disk is the ‘Update with changes’ service you want.


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